More than 100
colleges have set up channels on YouTube --- http://www.youtube.com/eduMany
universities offer over 100 videos, whereas Stanford offers a whopping 583 (or
many more by now)
Search for words like “accounting”

More than 400 colleges and universities have
set up channels on YouTube as part of the YouTube EDU section of the
popular video site, but university officials admit they are still
experimenting with the service and learning what types of videos
resonate with off-campus audiences.

With data provided by YouTube, The Chronicle
has determined the 10 most popular videos on YouTube EDU of the 2010-11
academic year (from June 2010 to June 2011). Some college officials
stress that popularity is not always their main goal—because many
colleges upload lectures and study materials designed for those enrolled
in the courses. Still, the list gives a sense of the variety of videos
colleges post and their impact.

Star-studded commencement speeches seem to be
the best way for colleges to draw viewers. Four graduation videos made
it onto the top-10 list, and three of the four featured high-profile
celebrity speakers: Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, and Conan O’Brien.
According to YouTube officials, searches on the site for the phrase
“commencement speech” have increased eightfold since 2008.

But the biggest hit of the year focused on a
graduating student rather than a star speaker. UC Berkeley’s video,
“Paralyzed student, Austin Whitney, walks at graduation,” topped the
list, with over 471,000 views. The clip shows Mr. Whitney, a graduating
senior who was paralyzed from the waist down before entering college,
walking to receive his diploma, aided by a mechanized exoskeleton that
UC Berkeley engineers designed for him.

Robotics videos were also crowd pleasers this
year. The University of Pennsylvania’s baseball-pitching machine earned
it a spot in the top 10, and the University of Chicago made it on the
list twice for gadget-themed clips. The first, the “Universal Gripper,”
displays a device researchers developed that can grip and move nearly
any object regardless of shape or size. The other video investigates how
the mechanized book-retrieval system in the university’s newly
constructed library works. Jeremy Manier, the university’s news
director, attributed the library video’s success to the fact that it
could engage several Web communities: those concerned with libraries and
the future of print; architecture enthusiasts; and techies. “It tells a
good story and it’s got robots,” he said, adding jocularly that “robots
rule the Internet.”

No traditional lectures made the list. The
closest thing to a lecture is an MIT physics “module”—a 20-minute
explanatory video by Walter H.G. Lewin, a professor of physics at the
institute. It explains the physics behind a familiar dilemma: Which will
make you more wet, walking or running in the rain?

Other academic lectures have proven quite
popular, though: A Harvard University lecture series on the philosophy
of justice has accumulated more than 1.6 million views since it was
uploaded in September 2009.

Although other individual lectures may not
receive a high number of hits, a growing number of colleges are posting
them. Some universities, such as UC Berkeley, Stanford, and MIT, have
begun posting all of the recorded lectures from selected courses,
allowing viewers from around the world to tune in and see what goes on
in their classrooms. By broadcasting their lectures, they “broaden the
window of access” to their resources, said Ben Hubbard, the manager of
UC Berkeley’s YouTube EDU channel. Through feedback from students and
spikes in viewership during midterms and exams, Mr. Hubbard has inferred
that the channel is actually being used as a study tool. However, he
said, “We know that we haven’t had just students logging in 120 million
times. We know we’re serving the public.”

It can be difficult to determine the factors
that lead a college video to go viral, and many college-news offices and
technology departments are still experimenting with ways to take full
advantage of their presence on YouTube. Angela Y. Lin, EDU’s manager at
YouTube, says the service provides “resources for all of our partners
regarding how to optimize their channels,” including statistics on user
views, as well as suggestions such as adding metadata, creating
playlists, and tagging keywords.

But the success of a video is ultimately
determined by the whims of The Crowd. “There is a certain mystery or
alchemy about what captures the public’s minds,” said Dan Mogulof, a UC
Berkeley spokesman. “There are common themes and variables that can
increase the chance of something becoming popular, but it’s not a simple
formula.”

There are now
nearly 7,000 accounting education videos on YouTube, most of which are in very
basic accounting.
But there are nearly 150 videos in advanced accounting.
There are nearly
70 videos on XBRL

An Absolute Must Read for Educators
One of the most exciting things I took away from the 2010 AAA Annual Meetings in
San Francisco is a hard copy handout entitled "Expanding Your Classroom with
Video Technology and Social Media," by Mark Holtzblatt and Norbert Tschakert.
Mark later sent me a copy of this handout and permission to serve it up to you
at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/Video-Expanding_Your_Classroom_CTLA_2010.pdf

This is an exciting listing to over 100 video clips and full-feature videos
that might be excellent resources for your courses, for your research, and for
your scholarship in general. Included are videos on resources and useful tips
for video projects as well as free online communication tools.

My thanks to Professors Holtzblatt and Tschakert for this tremendous body of
work that they are now sharing with us

While many students turn to YouTube when looking
for help with their homework, it can be hard to find good-quality
educational clips there, according to two professors who did a preliminary
analysis of several video search engines.

The two researchers, Jeffrey R. Bell, a professor
of biological sciences at California State University at Chico, and Jim
Bidlack, a biology prfessor at University of Central Oklahoma, entered
scientific terms into several video search engines and analyzed the top 20
results from each one to compare their relevance and educational usefulness.
Students were also shown some of the resulting videos and asked to rate
their effectiveness at explaining the concept involved.

The professors found that YouTube favored videos
made by students as class projects, perhaps because those videos attracted
more comments than professionally made ones, said Mr. Bell in an interview.Google Videoreturned the most high-quality videos in the top 20
search results, the professors said. (Google owns YouTube but also operates
Google Video, which includes videos across the Web rather than just those on
YouTube, which hosts videos from users.

"You go into YouTube and you put in "mitosis,"
you're going to get 3,000 videos back," said Mr. Bell. "But no one looks at
all of that. You're only going to look at the top 10, so the ranking
algorithm is really important."

The professors presented their findings during a
poster session at last week'sEmerging
Technologies for Online Learningsymposium, run
jointly by the Sloan Consortium, a nonprofit group to support teaching with
technology, and two providers of educational software and resources. The
professors say they plan to expand their study and hope to publish the
results.

Jensen Comment
I posted the following comment at the Chronicle of Higher Education:

What the authors are indirectly concluding is that
some of the top researchers in our most prestigious universities are lousy
teachers.

The videos that I've watched to date are only the
top researchers from Stanford, Berkeley, and MIT. I thought they had a lot
to say although they were not always the most dynamic speakers. Some were
pretty good.

What's lacking is the music and the graphics arts
and the comedy found on Comedy Central. Take your pick.

An Absolute Must Read for Educators
One of the most exciting things I took away from the 2010 AAA Annual Meetings in
San Francisco is a hard copy handout entitled "Expanding Your Classroom with
Video Technology and Social Media," by Mark Holtzblatt and Norbert Tschakert.
Mark later sent me a copy of this handout and permission to serve it up to you
at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/Video-Expanding_Your_Classroom_CTLA_2010.pdf

This is an exciting listing to over 100 video clips and full-feature videos
that might be excellent resources for your courses, for your research, and for
your scholarship in general. Included are videos on resources and useful tips
for video projects as well as free online communication tools.

My thanks to Professors Holtzblatt and Tschakert for this tremendous body of
work that they are now sharing with us.

The Journal of Accountancy has a great monthly technology section
(with particular focus on things you never, ever thought you could do with MS
Office, particularly Excel) ---
http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/
The Q&A modules are particularly informative and should be centralized in one
place in addition to monthly editions.

Technology is changing the way students learn. Is
it changing the way colleges teach?

Not enough, says George Siemens, associate director
of research and development at the University of Manitoba’s Learning
Technologies Centre.

While colleges and universities have been “fairly
aggressive” in adapting their curricula to the changing world, Mr. Siemens
told The Chronicle, “What we haven’t done very well in the last few
decades is altering our pedagogy.”

To help get colleges thinking about how they might
adapt their teaching styles to the new ways students absorb and process
information, Mr. Siemens and Peter Tittenberger, director of the center,
have created a Web-based guide, called the
Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning.

Taking their own advice, they have outfitted the
handbook with a wiki function that will allow readers to contribute their
own additions.

In the its introduction, the handbook declares the
old pedagogical model—where the students draw their information primarily
from textbooks, newspapers, and their professors—dead. “Our learning and
information acquisition is a mash-up,” the authors write. “We take pieces,
add pieces, dialogue, reframe, rethink, connect, and ultimately, we end up
with some type of pattern that symbolizes what’s happening ‘out there’ and
what it means to us.” Students are forced to develop new ways of making
sense of this flood of information fragments.

But Mr. Siemens said that colleges had been slow to
appreciate this fact. “I don’t see a lot of research coming out on what
universities might look like in the future,” he said. “If how we interact
with information and with each other fundamentally changes, it would suggest
that the institution also needs to change.”

How is education to fulfill its societal role of clarifying confusion
when tools of control over information creation and dissemination rest in
the hands of learners[3], contributing to the growing complexity and
confusion of information abundance?

Global, political, social, technological, and educational change
pressures are disrupting the traditional role (and possibly design) of
universities. Higher education faces a "re-balancing" in response to growing
points of tension along the following fault lines...

Technology is concerned with "designing aids and tools to perfect the
mind". As a means of extending the sometimes limited reach of humanity,
technology has been prominent in communication and learning. Technology has
also played a role in classrooms through the use of movies, recorded video
lectures, and overhead projectors. Emerging technology use is growing in
communication and in creating, sharing, and interacting around content.

A transition from epistemology (knowledge) to ontology (being) suggests
media and technology need to be employed to serve in the development of
learners capable of participating in complex environments.

It is not uncommon for theorists and thinkers to declare some variation
of the theme "change is the only constant". Surprisingly, in an era where
change is prominent, change itself has not been developed as a field of
study. Why do systems change? Why do entire societies move from one
governing philosophy to another? How does change occur within universities?

New literacies (based on abundance of information and the significant
changes brought about technology) are needed. Rather than conceiving
literacy as a singular concept, a multi-literacy view is warranted.

Each tool possesses multiple affordances. Blogs, for example, can be used
for personal reflection and interaction. Wikis are well suited for
collaborative work and brainstorming. Social networks tools are effective
for the formation of learning and social networks. Matching affordances of a
particular tool with learning activities is an important design and teaching
activity

Evaluating the effectiveness of technology use in teaching and learning
brings to mind Albert Einstein’s statement: "Not everything that can be
counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted". When we
begin to consider the impact and effectiveness of technology in the teaching
and learning process, obvious questions arise: "How do we measure
effectiveness? Is it time spent in a classroom? Is it a function of test
scores? Is it about learning? Or understanding?"

Through a process of active experimentation, the academy’s role in
society will emerge as a prominent sensemaking and knowledge expansion
institution, reflecting of the needs of learners and society while
maintaining its role as a transformative agent in pursuit of humanity’s
highest ideals.

The movie Dead Poets Society showed examples of why
students recalled so much of their learning. There were changes in location,
circumstances, use of emotions, movement, and novel classroom positions. We know that
learners remember much more when the learning is connected to a field trip, music, a
disaster, a guest speaker, or a novel learning location. Follow up with a discussion,
journal writing, a project, or peer teaching.

I am currently attending Perkins School of Theology
pursuing a Masters of Divinity in preparation for entering the ministry.
Perkins is the seminary located at Southern Methodist University. While
SMU's main campus is in Dallas, the class I am taking is taught (live) at a
satellite campus in Houston. Last Monday, one of the faculty visited the
Houston extension to see if the satellite was delivering the same quality of
education received at the main Dallas campus.

One of the topics that came up was on-line
education. Another Methodist seminary (Asbury) offers on-line courses but
Perkins does not. The agency which accredits most main-line seminaries
requires for any degree at least 24 hours of credit be earned at the main
campus of the seminary (I have already completed 33 hours in Dallas).

The unanimous recommendation by myself and the
other students was that Perkins does not offer on-line courses. (The faculty
member was surprised by this.) But our reasoning is that ministry is a
face-to-face profession. Personal interaction is a critical skill that
cannot be simulated by a computer. Another factor is that the way most
main-line churches are organized, the clergy are a small group that rely on
each other for a great deal of support. The students attending Perkins now
will be working with each other professionally for the next 30 years. And,
with pastors, there is more emotional investment and a higher priority on
personal relationships that might be found in such professions as
accounting.

As I said, this recommendation was unanimous among
those of us who spoke to the faculty member (there were about a dozen of us
or about a third of those who attend the Houston satellite campus). All of
us are second-career students. I would guess the average age was about 35
with ages ranging from the upper 20's to about 60. Three of us actually have
experience in on-line education (myself as a technician, one as a corporate
instructor, one as a course manager for a public university). To be fair, I
do know of at least one Houston extension student that does advocate for
on-line courses but she was not present at the interview. However, the
purpose of the interview was not to discuss on-line education - it was just
one of the topics that came up and I know it is something you are interested
in.

I guess what I wanted to let you know is that
on-line education may not be the "wave of the future" that some pundits say
that it is. Since for-profit schools are generally on-line universities, I
am wondering if it is the next bubble that will eventually burst.

XXXXX

April 8, 2012 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi XXXXX,

Good to hear from you.

Online education learning, like onsite education learning, depends on
many, many variables. The most important variables as a rule, aside from
student motivation to learn, are the skills and passion of the teacher.

The best teacher I know is Amy Dunbar at the University of Connecticut.
She's won all-university teaching awards at UTSA, the University of Iowa,
and UCON. She wins these awards whether teaching onsite or online. She says
online education has some key advantages to students, and if done optimally,
online learning may be easier for students and harder for teachers ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/002cpe/Dunbar2002.htm

Some things that are surprising is how shy or easily intimidated students
who rarely speak up in class or in face-to-face teams will assert themselves
in chat rooms or other online communications, including social networking.

If a teacher is not passionate about teaching an online course, the
online course is probably doomed from the start. If the teacher is
passionate about an online course then some wonderful things might happen
for students that cannot happen in a college that only has onsite courses.

Some Jensen History
On August 2, 2010 in San Francisco I was invited to make a short speech at the
Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum Section Breakfast. Afterwards a couple of you
questioned some of the dates I gave to events in my life. The events I mentioned
were true, but the dates were way off --- something I can only attribute to old
age and extemporaneous speaking.

For some unknown reason I decided to divert from my prepared remarks while
approaching the podium on August 2. I had not planned to talk about the "game
changer" in my professional life, but suddenly I was talking about the big game
changer in my life. Between 1966 and 1990 I was a lousy teacher focused only on
three performance scores for my work --- the number of accountics research
working papers (over 200 by 1990), the number of invited out-of-town research
presentations, and the number of refereed publications (about 50 by 1990) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Resume.htm#Published

My research rather than my teaching paid off handsomely when I became the
Nicolas M. Salgo Professor of Accounting at the University of Maine in 1968,
received a Guggenheim Fellowship for two think tank years (1971/72 and 1973/74)
at the Center for Advanced Study
in the Behavioral Sciences (Stanford University), became the the KPMG
Professor of Accounting at Florida State University in 1978, and ultimately
became the Jesse H. Jones Professor of Business at Trinity University in 1982.
My purpose here is not to brag. My purpose is to point out that research and
publication outweighed every other criterion to my "success" prior to 1990 and
made me what I think was overpaid between 1966 and 1990.

It was in the April 1990 (corrected date) when the game changer took
place in my life. I was invited, along with about 40 other accounting professors
in the State of Texas, by Prentice-Hall to attend an expense-paid seminar in
Dallas on "How to Improve Your Teaching." The presentations on how to improve my
teaching were uninspiring for nearly a day and a half until the very last
presentation of the seminar --- the game changer in my life that
instantly changed my entire focus from accountics research game playing to
teaching, learning, and technology.

The game changer in my life was a presentation by Darrell Ward.---
http://www.einstruction.com/News/index.cfm?fuseaction=news.display&menu=news&content=showArticle&id=202
Darrell resigned from the Computer Science Department at the University of North
Texas in the late 1980s to form HyperGraphics Corporation, HyperGraphics
first built upon the old HyperCard seminal slide presentation software for the
Apple II computers and added an entire non-linear navigation system and course
management system for learning and assessment of learning. I don't think the
Apple II version was all that successful, but when Darrill developed
Hypergraphics for the DOS-based PC, HyperGraphics had considerable success.

I think my mouth was open during Darrell's entire presentation. Afterwards I
went down and asked how I could buy the DOS-based HyperGraphics software.
Darrill said that I could buy the stack of floppy disks and an instruction
manual for $850 on the spot. I took out a check (my wife only allows me to carry
one check) from my bill fold and wrote out a check for $850.

During the flight home from Dallas it then dawned on me that I did not own a
PC. So instead of taking a taxi home from the San Antonio Airport, I took cab to
a store called CompuAdd. There I paid over $2,000 for my first PC and projection
panel. Until then I was always a snobby main frame guy (having taught FORTRAN,
COBAL, and SPSS for the main frame) who, like IBM, thought that the the PC was
simply a child's toy. After arriving home from the CompuAdd store I had to
explain to my wife how I spent $3,000 on my way home from Dallas. Since I used
my only check to buy the HyperGraphics software, I had to use a Visa card to buy
the PC and an overhead panel.

In the summer of 1990 (corrected date) I worked about 15 hours a day
programming my first course (a managerial accounting course) in HyperGraphics.
In September of 1990 I unveiled my course to some of my Trinity University
colleagues in a totally dark room using one of those terrible projection panels
sitting on top of an overhead projector. The early panels converted all the
color pictures to gray scale and were dim to read. But I could still demo what I
thought was really cool --- nonlinear navigation for asynchronous learning and
graphics/equation building in stages for student learning of complex details
asynchronously. My colleagues departed shaking their heads and whispering that
Jensen must be nuts.

It was October 4-5, 1990 (corrected date) when I made my first away-from-home
dog and pony show on featuring HyperGraphics technology --- at the University of
Wisconsin. HyperGraphics software pretty much died after Windows replaced the
DOS operating system in PCs. I then shifted my managerial accounting and
accounting theory courses to ToolBooks for the PC. My out-of-town dog and pony
shows really commenced to roll when my university hosts invested in those old
three-barrel color projectors that predated LCD projectors. I eventually made
hundreds of presentations of HyperGraphics and then ToolBooks on college
campuses in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Finland, Sweden, Germany,
Holland, and the United Kingdom (where I lugged my full PC and LCD projector
between five campuses as the European Accounting Association Visiting
Professor). Many of my campus visits and topics are listed at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Resume.htm#Presentations

You can read about the history of HyperGraphics, ToolBook, Authorware, and
the many other course authoring and management software systems (most of which
died either early or prolonged deaths) at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

The important game changer for me in April 1990 is that I belatedly commenced
to think about how students learn and more importantly how I could become a
better teacher (or rather learning manager) by helping students study
complicated material on their own asynchronously with the ability to keep
replaying at their own learning paces. I even wrote an early 1994 book on
learning technology with the aid of Petrea Sandlin as my editor ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245cont.htm

My thoughts about how students learn are summarized in two evolving papers
at:

My life seems to have taken on more meaning since I focused more on my
students and how they learn.

October 19, 2010 message from Jagdish Gangolly

Over the years I have been frustrated with the lack
of software support for collaborative research, especially for writing
papers. Very often my coauthors are far from Albany (and out of the
country), and we need a way to maintain version control for papers,
annotation of document changes, facilities for rollback, and management of
bibliographies with minimum effort.

At long last, I (and my collaborators) seem to have
found the solution from a very unlikely source: the Eclipse IDE used widely
for programming. In fact I had used it in my teaching of Java language in
the past. In conjunction with texlipse (which works within Eclipse), it
provides a superior authoring environment in addition to being able to use
the same environment for programming of necessary. Best of all. it is FREE,
so no tithing the Church of Bill.

It works exactly like any commercial database
system with good access controls. It also is platform agnostic, and works on
windows, linux/unix/mac as well as most IBM mid-range and mainframes.

I will add your Tidbit to my threads on much simpler ways to collaborate
such a Google Docs that Amy Dunbar and Rick Lillie passionately recommend
for student collaboration projects.

August 15, 2010 message from Bob Jensen

Hi Rick,

In my reply I should’ve
added some things about technology-experimenting accounting professors who
pull off their experiments with an exceptional degree of passion. In
addition to Amy Dunbar and Rick Lillie, I should’ve mentioned Steve Hornik
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife
I can’t imagine how Steve pulls these innovations off with class sizes in
the hundreds.

I’m certain there are
others that are passionate in their own ways, and some of these passionate
and innovative accounting educators are identified in the TLC Section Page
at
http://aaahq.org/TeachCurr/index.html

I
just finished the first week of a 12-week MSA online tax course at UConn. I
put students in groups and I ask them to work fairly lengthy quizzes
(homework) independently, putting their answers in an Excel spreadsheet, and
then they meet in chats to discuss their differences. When they can’t
resolve a question, they invite me into chat. This week a student introduced
me to Google docs, and I was swept off my feet by the way this tool could be
used in my class. I love it! I created a video on the fly on Thursday to
illustrate how to create a spreadsheet and share it with other group
members. I may be the last to the party on this tool, but in case some of
you aren’t aware of it, I am posting the video.

I use Google Docs and Spreadsheets with all of my courses. It's
free, includes most of the Microsoft Office features, and makes it easy for
students to collaborate on team projects. It also makes it easy to submit
the final document in various formats (e.g., .pdf format).

My students use two communication tools in conjunction with
Google Docs and Spreadsheets (i.e., TokBox and Skype). To use these tools,
they need a headset/microphone and webcam.

TokBox (http://www.tokbox.com)
is a free, hosted video messaging service. You can record up to a 10 minute
video clip that can be shared by URL link. TokBox also includes a video
chat feature that enables multiple people to video conference. This feature
works great with study teams.

Skype (http://www.skype.com)
includes chat, audio and video-conferencing. The chat feature works
probably better than what you have been using. With a headset/microphone,
you can have up to 10+ people in a audio conference call.
Video-conferencing is 1:1 and includes a great screen sharing feature.

You can really change the nature of team collaboration when you
combine Google Docs and Spreadsheets with TokBox and/or Skype. Following is
an example of how to do this.

EXAMPLE

Students use Google Docs to create a shared workspace for writing
a paper. One student sets up the workspace and invites team members into
the space through an email link. Each team member is given editor rights.

Using a headset/microphone and webcam, students use TokBox to
host a group video conference call. This enables students to brainstorm and
get a project running.

During the work process, each team member adds/changes the paper
in the common workspace in Google Docs.

When it is time to pull the paper together and do final editing,
students use the audio conference call feature to talk with each other.
While all are online in Skype, each team member logs into the Google Docs
paper and views it on his/her computer screen. One or more students act as
the editor. All see changes as they are made.

When editing is finished, one student exports the final
assignment document in .pdf format to his/her hard drive. The student then
submits the document for grading (e.g., student uploads the paper through
the Digital Drop Box in Blackboard).

OUTCOME

By combining the features of Google Docs and Spreadsheets with
communication tools like TokBox and Skype, students learn how to use
technology to get things done. Major companies pay a fortune to do what
your students can do for free. Purchasing a headset/microphone and webcam
is relatively inexpensive. The experience students get is priceless.

I use this approach and technology tools with face-2-face,
blended, and online classes. It works great. The approach changes the
nature of how students and instructor interact in the teaching-learning
experience.

On the last day of class, I would love to hear my students say:
“I never thought I could work so hard. I never thought I could learn so
much. I never thought I could think so deeply. And, it was actually fun.”
(Joe Hoyle)

Jensen Comment
I’m certain that you will miss your beloved TokBox software now that it,
like Google Wave, has been discarded on the trash pile of abandoned
technology.

From:
AECM, Accounting Education using Computers and Multimedia [mailto:AECM@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU]
On Behalf Of Rick LillieSent: Saturday, August 14, 2010 9:18 PMTo: AECM@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDUSubject: Re: An Example of how I combine technologies to create a fully
online teaching-learning experience

Hi
Bob,

Thank you for great feedback about the interactive Class Assignments
Schedule (CAS) format that I developed for my third course in Intermediate
Accounting. I agree with your comments. I am revising the CAS for my FQ
2010 course, so your comments and suggestions arrive at the right moment.
Below are comments for several issues that you raised. Hopefully, I can
explain why I did, what I did.

For AECM readers, below is the link to the interactive Class Assignments
Schedule that you reviewed.

When
exploring linked features on the CAS, it works best to "right-click" on a
link and then click the "open in a new window" option. This makes it easier
to navigate CAS features.

ABOUT THE VOICETHREAD STUDENT COMMENTARIES

Both CalState San Bernardino and UCLA Extension use Blackboard. The LMS
includes a discussion board feature that works well for certain information
sharing activities. However, this past year, I became dissatisfied with
using the "finger tapping" discussion board for student discussions.

What I tend to find is that the first few students who post discussion
comments and responses post original thoughts. After the first postings,
things get repetitive. Unfortunately, Blackboard (and most LMS systems)
does not make it possible to keep postings private until after a deadline
has passed. The LMS structure almost by default encourages plagiarism.

VoiceThread includes an option that allows postings to be kept private
until I am ready to make them public for all class members to view. This
greatly reduces the chances of plagiarism occurring.

VoiceThread allows three ways to post comments (i.e., text, audio, or
video). For the first VoiceThread assignment, students can use any of the
three formats to post comments. For subsequent VoiceThead assignments,
students must post video comments. This helps students improve their oral
speaking/conversation presentation skills. A student can see how he/she
comes across to others. A student can hear his(her) own explanation.

I tell students to explain in terms a client will understand. Save the
"technical jargon" for colleagues who need to be impressed. VoiceThread
makes it possible for a student to see how well he(she) met this standard.

Once the posting deadline passes, I make all postings public to all class
members. I use Zoomerang (online survey system) to allow students to
anonymously rate each other's commentaries. I use the overall ratings and a
simple grading rubric as the basis for awarding individual grades. Often a
student wants to talk about his(her) presentation. We use Skype for a 1:1
video conference call.

EARLY COURSE FEATURES

I will add the "start-up" professionalization topics that you recommended.
I talk about these throughout the course, but have not specifically included
them on the Class Assignments Schedule. I set up other pages in Blackboard
for these items. I'll see I can add them to the Class Assignments Schedule.

During FQ 2009, AAA allowed me to include Sir David Tweedie's speech from
the 2009 AAA Annual Meeting. I replaced Sir Tweedie's speech with the Paul
Volker video. I viewed the Partnoy video. I agree this would be a far
better opening video. The "financial transparency" issue sets a good
opening tone for the overall course. The way the CAS is currently designed,
I use Warren Buffett materials to focus on "financial transparency." But,
this is done through the closing topic.

My syllabus (which is different from the CAS) includes discussion of
academic ethics, integrity, plagiarism, and cheating. However, my comments
are not as dynamic as yours. I will revise wording in my syllabus.

I agree with your comment about introducing XBRL. I already decided to
introduce XBRL throughout the course through short, web research exercises.
This should make the coverage relevant, practical, and less technical.

GENERAL COMMENTS ABOUT COURSE DESIGN

I agree with your comments about demanding almost too much from students.
I am cutting back supplemental readings to no more than one or two per
topic. I refer to the readings as "Connect to Practice." Readings will
come from practitioner publications like the Journal of Accountancy or The
CPA Journal. I appreciate your references to Joe Hoyle's teaching advice.

IN CLOSING

Thank you for great advice and outstanding ideas. Once I revise the
interactive Class Assignments Schedule for FQ 2010, I will email you the
hyperlink to the revised web page. I think you will see significant
improvements.

Again, thank you for your comments at the TLC Breakfast meeting. I really
appreciated you doing this.

Inspired by a Twitter conversation last week with
Caleb McDaniel (@wcaleb),
I decided to revisit it here.

I recently used Wordle in an assignment for my
January Intercession class (on F. Scott Fitzgerald) and found it very useful
for introducing students to close-reading and the basics of textual
analysis. As an English professor, textual analysis is one of the most
fundamental skills that I teach, and as a result, it can feel like the bane
of my existence. The source of my frustration (and that of my students) is
trying to get from summary and/or description to analysis. Students are
often very good at describing what is happening in a text, but it can be
very hard for them to break out of this habit and think about language in
other ways.

Enter Wordle.

To me, there are two things that make Wordle
invaluable:

It’s free and very easy to use. As an open
web-based program, all students with access to a computer can use it. It
doesn’t require specific hardware (read: iPad) or charge fees for
accessing the site.

It’s fun. Generating a Word Cloud is as simple
as clicking on the “Create” link, pasting in “a bunch of text,” and
clicking “Go.” Once the Word Cloud is created, students can then play
with fonts, color schemes, and other visual variables such as whether
they prefer the words to be laid out horizontally, vertically, or a bit
of both.

In my class, I first demonstrated how to use Wordle
with the novel we were reading (This Side of Paradise), which had
the added benefit of being published in 1921, so it is no-longer copyright
protected so I could use passages from
Project Gutenberg’s edition of the novelrather
than having to transcribe them manually. We created a few word clouds
together as a class to make sure everyone knew how to do it, and then I
asked the students how looking at these passages through the Wordle lens
might change their understanding. What did they notice seeing the words
rearranged, and in some cases resized (the size of words in the Wordle is
directly proportionate to the number of times that the word appears in the
initial text block)? By deconstructing and defamiliarizing the passage,
Wordle magically freed students from the summary trap and helped them to
think about the text analytically beyond the constraints of plot. Word
clouds do not have plots, at least not in the linear convention sense that
allows easy summary, so analysis was suddenly less confusing.

Finally, I asked students to create a Wordle on
their own and post a screenshot of it to the class blog. They could choose
any episode from This Side of Paradise that we had not already
examined together in class. Once they had their Wordle, they were asked to
answer a few questions: “Does this graphic visualization of the text
highlight certain themes or issues in the episode? Does it emphasize
particular themes or ideas? Do you notice things about the episode that you
had previously discounted in your earlier reading?”

Posting the Wordles to the website proved to be a
bit tricky for some, but that difficulty stemmed from the screenshot rather
than Wordle itself.

My class created some very interesting Wordles, and
more to the point, using this tool helped to make the task of literary
analysis less daunting, which is often no easy feat! I was left wondering
why I don’t use it more often in my classes and am currently trying to
figure out ways to incorporate it into other assignments.

Recently,
I read about Zoom.us
a new free, cloud-based, video-conferencing service.
Yesterday, three of us used zoom.us to work on a research
project. We are located throughout the U.S. We logged into
the video conference call and worked for more than an hour.
The audio and video were crystal clear. We shared desktops
to work on documents together. Wow! The virtual work
session was very productive and enjoyable.

I use
Skypeto work with
colleagues and to offer virtual office hours for my
students. Skype offers a free 1:1 video-conference call
with desktop sharing. To include more than two people in a
Skype video call, you need to subscribe to
Skype's premium service. Skype's
fee is very reasonable; however, it's difficult to beat
"free."

Both
Zoom.us and Skype have features
that meet specific needs. Therefore, both services are
valuable to the teaching-learning experience. The quality
of the zoom.us video-conference call was exceptional. Zoom.us
versus Skype is not an either/or situation. Using one
service or the other is a judgment call regarding features
that best fit the need as hand.

Getting started with zoom.us is quick and easy to do. Their
support pageexplanations
are easy to follow. The service works with Google and
Facebook, iPad, iPhone, Windows and Mac. When I set up
zoom.us, I had to download a small file to my computer that
includes the zoom.us interface. The download was quick. No
problem.

Below is a
screenshot from the support page indicating key features of
the zoom.us interface screen. Individual members
participating in a video call are shown at the top of the
screen. When a member speaks, the border of the member's
screen turns "green." The speaker's screen displays in the
"big screen" section of the interface window. This process
works as the conversation switches among participants. Wow!
This is amazing and allows each speaker to be the center of
attention.

Check out
zoom.us. I think you'll like this new
video-conference service.

Best wishes,

Rick Lillie
(
CSU San Bernardino)

UPDATED
INFORMATION: DOWNLOADING ZOOM.US TO YOUR DESKTOP -- IMPORTANT

I talked with the developers of zoom.us this afternoon. They explained the simple way to download the small zoom.us file to your computer's desktop.

Follow-up screen
should start the download process. (Allow this to happen.)

zoom.us file should
download and the "z icon" should display on your desktop.

Unless you change the
"settings" in zoom.us, you will need to double-click on the zoom.us
icon on your desktop to start the program. Once the icon displays
at the bottom of your monitor screen, click the icon to open the
zoom.us screen. Click the Start Video Meeting
button. When the screen displays, click the Invite
option. Enter the email addresses for participants
you wish to invite into the video conference call. Send
the email message. Stay logged into zoom.us. Watch
participants join the video conference call.

I think you will be
amazed by the clarity and crispness of the audio and video call.

I talked Com into giving me a promo rate of 62,
went to Vonage @ 25, total 87 … not bad

Then Com went back to 130, so I talked Verizon into
70 for all 3. But this expires in June.

I have looked at Vonage, Magic Jack, not Skype –
all these alt phones don’t seem to support Faxes,

and to be honest it seems Verizon still beats all
these for clarity

This wouldn’t bother me, as I send email
attachments to all but one – guess who – the IRS

As far as cable, I just went w/ Netflix – unlimited
movies for $8/mo

Now if I could find a TV provider of all the news (incl
CNBC), I would be happy

When you go to alternative providers there is
always a tradeoff – you can’t get something for nothing.

January 4, 2010 reply from Rick Lillie

While there are some features in Skype v5.0.0.156
that I do not care about, overall I really like the new Skype version. I'm
not a Facebook person. I prefer that links to Facebook and other social
media be kept optional for users who want such features.

We all have our biases, which is clear from the
Howlett article, forum comments and my comments in this email message. I'm a
"PC" person. I'm not an "Apple" person. I'm probably in the minority, but I
don't care for the iPad. I'll stick with my ThinkPad Tablet computer. It's
capabilities go far beyond what the iPad can do.

I use Skype to offer virtual office hours for my
students. This makes it possible to extend the benefits of traditional
office hours to students who are unable to come to my office during set
times. Students really like using Skype to work together.

Skype features like desktop sharing make it easy to
work one-on-one with students when they need help with assignments. The
instant messaging and file sharing features are exceptional, especially with
improvements added in v5. With v5, you can send a message or file to someone
even though the other party is not online at the moment. Skype now
temporarily stores the message or file until the other party is available
and then downloads it. This improvement takes peer-to-peer to the next
performance level.

I have used Skype's new multi-party video
conferencing. It worked fine. Several study groups used multi-party video
conferencing during Fall Quarter 2010 and liked its performance. I see a
real future for multi-party video conferencing. My concern is that it will
become a fee-based service that students will not be able to afford.

I combine the free features of Skype with features
of other free Web 2.0 technologies to teach my students how to use
technology to create, share, and communicate. For example, when we combine
Skype with Google Docs and Spreadsheets, students learn to do what you can
do in WebEx or Adobe Connect. This combination is free. The alternatives are
extremely expensive.

Skype's interface changed with v5. Without a doubt,
it will change again. Skype listens to feedback. Technology evolves.

Skype includes a bundle of features that makes it a
powerful communicative, collaborative Web 2.0 technology tool. It includes
far more useful features in one tool than I find in other similar tools.
This is what makes Skype really useful and easy to use.

Skype changes itself about every 15 minutes. If you
don't like the current version, be patient or find a better alternative. If
you truly find a better alternative, please share it.

From:
AECM, Accounting Education using Computers and Multimedia [mailto:AECM@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDU]
On Behalf Of Jensen, RobertSent: Saturday, August 14, 2010 3:17 PMTo: AECM@LISTSERV.LOYOLA.EDUSubject: FW: An Example of how I combine technologies to create a fully
online teaching-learning experience

Hi Rick,

I will expand well beyond your direct question
to me in the interest of all AECM readers.

Probably the most unique aspect of your course
is the use of student voice threads. I really don’t have much to say about
these since I’ve never seen them used and have not read testimonials about
how it well they work. Like most education technology, I suspect that this
technology mostly depends on context and how it is used for grading
purposes. Like Joe Hoyle, I think how you test is how students really learn.
The voice thread idea might counter this somewhat, but much depends upon the
role of voice threads in the grading formula.

I think all AECM readers should watch your
tutorial on how to use the voice threading system.

You are a bit like Amy Dunbar in that when you
try something new it will probably work for you because of your passion for
making it a success. Less passionate accounting educators should be warned
that what works fantastically for Rick Lillie and Amy Dunbar will not
necessarily work for them without the accompanying passion.

My first reaction to your syllabus is that you
demand almost too much from your students --- especially in terms of the
volume of reading and video watching. For the readings assigned as “peruse
readings” perhaps you need guidelines about what you expect from a “peruse”
cruse. Some students will spend a great deal of time and take copious notes
if they think any assigned material will be on an exam or quiz. Perhaps you
should let students see “possible quiz questions” in advance for each
“peruse” cruise. But then reserve the right to ask a general question not
given in advance to scare students who may decentralize (among themselves)
the answering of possible quiz questions.

2009 Best Places
to Start/Intern According to Bloomberg/Business Week
Also see the Internship and Table links .
The Top five rankings contain all Big Four accountancy firms.
Somehow Proctor and Gamble slipped into Rank 4 above PwC
The accountancy firms of Grant Thornton and RMS McGladrey make the top 40 at
ranks 32 and 33 respectively.

Early on invite some of your most gifted
graduate students in to talk about their intern experiences --- hopefully
there will be Big Four interns and non-Big Four interns for these
presentations.

In lieu of having live presentations, former
intern videos might be displayed for the class.

Perhaps XBRL can be delayed a bit. That’s a bit
technical and dull for openers.

You should explain why global work opportunities
are opening up somewhat because of IFRS (avoid the convergence debate at
this point).

I would also dwell on the growing opportunities
for accounting majors --- including working for the FBI and working on your
own or within a company as a forensic accountant. Explain the typical duties
of both types of professionals. Explain how advantages arise for graduates
fluent in more than one language. Also explain the difference between
education and training so that your students try to stop hating humanities
and science requirements.

Also explain why working for government (e.g.,
the IRS) can lead to great career opportunities later in life such that
you’ve given hope to graduates who do not make it into or do not want to
make it into the Big Four to start with at the time of graduation. Graduates
who do not get Big Four offers are not doomed for life.

I would also devote some class time to the
shortage of doctoral graduates in accounting and opportunities for
accounting doctoral graduates (e.g., mention Texas A&M, USC, and Stanford
starting salaries, research stipends, teaching loads, and research expense
report. But be fair and also mention tenure track hurdles. A good reference
is the following:

Then explain why it is probably best to obtain
1-5 years of experience as a practicing accountant before returning to a
doctoral program.

Drop the VARK Stuff
I’m not into learning styles since I think top students adapt to whatever
pedagogy is used by the instructor in every course taken at a university. I
would instead explain why self-learning may be superior for nearly all
students without going into details and conjectures at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm

And remember what Joe Hoyle alleges --- students
learn what you test them on such that, good or bad, examinations and quizzes
are the focal point of student attention. You need to spell you your testing
and grading guidelines very clearly.

Early on, especially in the syllabus, I would
explain the nuances of academic ethics, integrity, plagiarism, and cheating
that you will not tolerate in the course. Explain the difference between
learning collaboration/cooperating versus cheating and free riding.

Probably the most unique aspect of your course
is the use of student voice threads. I really don’t have much to say about
this since I’ve never seen this used and have not read testimonials about
how it well it works. Like most education technology, I suspect that it
mostly depends on context and how it is used for grading purposes. Like Joe
Hoyle, I think how you test is how students really learn. The voice thread
idea might counter this somewhat, but much depends upon the role of voice
threads in the grading formula.

Abusive off-balance sheet accounting was a major
cause of the financial crisis. These abuses triggered a daisy chain of
dysfunctional decision-making by removing transparency from investors,
markets, and regulators. Off-balance sheet accounting facilitating the
spread of the bad loans, securitizations, and derivative transactions that
brought the financial system to the brink of collapse.

As in the 1920s, the balance sheets of major
corporations recently failed to provide a clear picture of the financial
health of those entities. Banks in particular have become predisposed to
narrow the size of their balance sheets, because investors and regulators
use the balance sheet as an anchor in their assessment of risk. Banks use
financial engineering to make it appear that they are better capitalized and
less risky than they really are. Most people and businesses include all of
their assets and liabilities on their balance sheets. But large financial
institutions do not.

Lynn Turner has the unique perspective of having been the
Chief Accountant of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a member of
boards of public companies, a trustee of a mutual fund and a public pension
fund, a professor of accounting, a partner in one of the major international
auditing firms, the managing director of a research firm and a chief
financial officers and an executive in industry. In 2007, Treasury
Secretary Paulson appointed him to the Treasury Committee on the Auditing
Profession. He currently serves as a senior advisor to LECG, an
international forensics and economic consulting firm.

The views
expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily
reflect the positions of the Roosevelt Institute, its officers, or its
directors.

My point is that I think there are a lot of
better accounting things to start this course with than the Volcker finance
video.

As I mentioned in my TLC breakfast speech, I
think Rick Lillie is one of the brightest resources in accounting
education’s stable of accounting educators. He brings a passion for
technology experimentation into learning and is willing to share his
experiences with the education world. All accounting educators should track
his main blog at
http://iaed.wordpress.com/
The postings are not frequent (i.e.., not daily) but they are highly
informative about new advances in education technology.

I have deactivated several links on the example Class Assignments
Schedule. As I wrote to you earlier today, I deactivated some links in
order to protect student privacy. It is OK now to share my comments and
example Class Assignments Schedule on your website and AECM.

You blew me
away at the TLC breakfast, when during your presentation, you mentioned me
and my work. Thank you. I am most grateful for the kind comments.

I read your
comments today about the game-changing experience that moved you toward
teaching with technology. I really enjoyed your presentation at the TLC
breakfast. I wish there had been more time, but that's how speeches go.

Like your
experience, several events happening since "2000," have done much the same
thing for me. I would like to share an example of how I use technology to
create course materials and share them with my students. I do not think I
have shared this with you before. I would appreciate your feedback
comments.

The approaches
I am developing may be used in face-2-face, blended, and fully online
formats. Click the link below to access what I call an interactive class
assignments schedule. I have taken the traditional assignments schedule
included in a course syllabus and converted it into a Web 2.0 interactive
teaching-learning experience.

I use the
interactive class assignments schedule format with the third course in
Intermediate Accounting that I teach for both CSUSB and UCLA Extension. The
CSUSB section is taught in a blended format. The UCLA Extension class
includes students from around the world and is fully online.

The page
design is simple. It is a data table. Each row presents a study week
during the course. The study process moves left-to-right across the row. I
treat the study week as beginning on Monday and ending the following
Saturday evening at 11 PM (PST/PDT).

The second
column of the table includes study content. The third column includes
practice. The fourth column includes assessment.

Each week
begins with an embedded video where I talk with students about the study
week. I create an interactive mind map to guide students through the
chapter topic. I use VoiceThread to create short lecture/discussion
segments that are linked to subtopics of the mind map diagram. Click on the
"V" icon on the mind map to view a streaming video lecture segment.

Homework is
completed through WileyPlus, an online homework system that supports the
Kieso textbook. I talked with Jerry Weygandt about how I select exercises
for homework assignments.

Homework
assignments are at the concept-technique level. Weekly quiz questions are
open-book, research-based and go deeper into concepts and critical
thinking. Each Sunday morning, I post links to suggested solutions and
support explanations for quiz questions.

The
interactive class assignments schedule is asynchronous and combines features
of several Web 2.0 technology tools. When a student needs "live" contact,
we use Skype. This works great.

Student
feedback has been excellent. During Spring Quarter 2010, UCLA Extension
students rated the course 8.5 out of 9.0. It was a great class. Everyone
enjoyed the give-and-take during the term.

I would
really appreciate your feedback comments about the interactive class
assignments schedule. This is one example of what I am doing. I am working
on a paper that describes how to use technology to create "teaching
presence" in the teaching-learning experience.

If you would
be interested, perhaps we could use Skype to talk about the class
assignments schedule.

On
the last day of class, I would love to hear my students say:
“I never thought I could work so hard. I never thought I could learn so
much. I never thought I could think so deeply. And, it was actually fun.”
(Joe Hoyle)

The iPad DecisionSome CPAs swear by the iPad, calling it an
indispensable business tool. Other CPAs believe Apple's tablet is about as
useful as a legless table. This article examines the iPad's strengths and
weaknesses, introduces the top apps and accessories, and gives guidelines for
deciding if the iPad is right for you and your business.
http://email.aicpa.org/cgi-bin15/DM/t/eit20bAne80GTt0Bpwt0Ea

¶At one of Apple’s
trademark press events here, Tim Cook, the chief executive, took to the
stage to unveil this year’s iPad — and a few other surprises.

¶I’m calling
it “this year’s iPad” because it has no other distinguishing name. Apple
says the name is not “iPad 3,” even though the previous model was called the
iPad 2. And it’s not “iPad HD,” even though its new retina screen has higher
resolution than a high-definition TV screen.

¶I played with
it a little Wednesday and I will be doing an extensive review later. For
now, here are a few first impressions.

¶The prices,
storage and battery life are identical to the previous iPads’. Which is
impressive — 4G is famous as a battery hog. That’s why this new iPad is a
tiny bit thicker and heavier than the last one; it needs a beefier battery.

¶That wasn’t
the only news during the unveiling. Apple also revealed that its $100 Apple
TV would get a minor upgrade on March 16. It will be able to play movies in
1080p high definition, and it will have a new icon-based software design.

¶Oh — and
movies you buy from Apple’s online store are now available in an online
iCloud locker, available for viewing on any Apple gadget, just as music and
TV shows are.

¶To me,
though, the most interesting developments were the new apps that Apple has
developed for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.
GarageBand, for example, has been blessed with several new music-making
features. One of them lets up to four people play different instruments
simultaneously. Somehow, their four touchscreen devices stay synchronized
over Wi-Fi, and they make a master, perfectly synced four-track recording,
ready for mixing, editing (there’s a new note-by-note editing mode) and
posting online.

¶My favorite,
if Apple’s demo was any indication, will be iPhoto for iOS. (Like GarageBand,
it’s a $5 download. GarageBand is a free upgrade if you bought an earlier
iOS version..)

¶In
some ways, it goes beyond iPhoto for the Mac, in that its editing tools can
do more than affect an entire photo in one swoop.
It offers brushes that let you dab with your fingers to brighten, darken,
saturate, desaturate or otherwise enhance individual parts of a photo.That’s something you can do in Photoshop, but it’s never
been possible in iPhoto.Multitouch is used cleverly; for example, with two
fingers you can rotate a photo, zoom in and out, adjust the shadowy
“vignette” framing, and so on.

Last week's release ofPaper for iPadwas a huge boon to the cottage industry of third-party
iPad styluses. It was hardly the first app for drawing or writing directly
on the screen of an iOS device, but it struck a chord. It was just the right
blend of skeuomorphic real-world design and familiar iOS gestures. I had
never even considered a stylus before, but this seemed like my chance.

I travel the Internet in fairly Apple-obsessed
early-adopter circles, so I went with the stylus I'd seen recommended most
often: the
Cosmonaut by Studio Neat. Studio
Neat made theGlif
camera mount, one of the most celebrated iPhone
peripherals around, so it seemed like a safe bet.

The Cosmonaut arrived in short order in spartan,
Space Race packaging. It's fairly wide to hold like a pen. It's black,
grippy and dense, the exact same length as an iPhone. The business end
exhibits the capacitive properties the touch screen requires: a soft touch
that gives way gradually to pressure, just like a fingertip, but more
precise.

Although Apple's popular iPad tablet has been able
to replace laptops for many tasks, it isn't a big hit with folks who'd like
to use it to create or edit long Microsoft Office documents.

While Microsoft has released a number of apps for
the iPad, it hasn't yet released an iPad version of Office. There are a
number of valuable apps that can create or edit Office documents, such as
Quickoffice Pro, Documents To Go and the iPad version of Apple's own iWork
suite. But their fidelity with Office documents created on a Windows PC or a
Mac isn't perfect.

This week, Onlive Inc., in Palo Alto, Calif., is
releasing an app that brings the full, genuine Windows versions of the key
Office productivity apps—Word, Excel and PowerPoint—to the iPad. And it's
free. These are the real programs. They look and work just like they do on a
real Windows PC. They let you create or edit genuine Word documents, Excel
spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations.

I've been testing a pre-release version of this new
app, called OnLive Desktop, which the company says will be available in the
next few days in Apple's app store. More information is at
desktop.onlive.com.

My verdict is that it works, but with some caveats,
limitations and rough edges. Some of these downsides are inherent in the
product, while others have to do with the mismatch between the iPad's touch
interface and the fact that Office for Windows was primarily designed for a
physical keyboard and mouse.

Creating or editing long documents on a tablet with
a virtual on-screen keyboard is a chore, no matter what Office-type app you
choose. So, although it isn't a requirement, I strongly recommend that users
of OnLive Desktop employ one of the many add-on wireless keyboards for the
iPad.

OnLive Desktop is a cloud-based app. That means it
doesn't actually install Office on your iPad. It acts as a gateway to a
remote server where Windows 7, and the three Office apps, are actually
running. You create an account, sign in, and Windows pops up on your iPad,
with icons allowing you to launch Word, Excel or PowerPoint. (There are also
a few other, minor Windows programs included, like Notepad, Calculator and
Paint.)

In my tests, the Office apps launched and worked
smoothly and quickly, without any noticeable lag, despite the fact that they
were operating remotely. Although this worked better for me on my fast home
Internet connection, it also worked pretty well on a much slower hotel
connection.

Like Office itself, the documents you create or
modify don't live on the iPad. Instead, they go to a cloud-based repository,
a sort of virtual hard disk. When you sign into OnLive Desktop, you see your
documents in the standard Windows documents folder, which is actually on the
remote server. The company says that this document storage won't be
available until a few days after the app becomes available.

To get files into and out of OnLive Desktop, you
log into a Web site on your PC or Mac, where you see all the documents
you've saved to your cloud repository. You can use this Web site to upload
and download files to your OnLive Desktop account. Any changes made will be
automatically synced, the company says, though I wasn't able to test that
capability in my pre-release version.

Because it's a cloud-based service, OnLive Desktop
won't work offline, such as in planes without Wi-Fi. And it can be finicky
about network speeds. It requires a wireless network with at least 1 megabit
per second of download speed, and works best with at least 1.5 to 2.0
megabits. Many hotels have trouble delivering those speeds, and, in my
tests, the app refused to start in a hotel twice, claiming insufficient
network speed when the hotel Wi-Fi was overloaded.

The free version of the app has some other
limitations. You get just 2 gigabytes of file storage, there's no Web
browser or email program like Outlook included, and you can't install
additional software. If many users are trying to log onto the OnLive Desktop
servers at once, you may have to wait your turn to use Office.

In the coming weeks, the company plans to launch a
Pro version, which will cost $10 a month. It will offer 50 GB of cloud
document storage, "priority" access to the servers, a Web browser, and the
ability to install some added programs. It will also allow you to
collaborate on documents with other users, or even to chat with, and present
material to, groups of other OnLive Desktop users.

The company also plans to offer OnLive Desktop on
Android tablets, PCs and Macs, and iPhones.

In my tests, I was able to create documents on an
iPad in each of the three cloud-based Office programs. I was able to
download them to a computer, and alter them on both the iPad and computer. I
was also able to upload files from the computer for use in OnLive Desktop.

OnLive Desktop can't use the iPad's built-in
virtual keyboard, but it can use the virtual keyboard built into Windows 7
and Windows' limited touch features and handwriting recognition. As noted
above, I recommend using a wireless physical keyboard. But even these aren't
a perfect solution, because the ones that work with the iPad can't send
common Windows keyboard commands to OnLive Desktop, so you wind up moving
between the keyboard and the touch screen, which can be frustrating. And you
can't use a mouse.

Another drawback is that OnLive Desktop is entirely
isolated from the rest of the iPad. Unlike Office-compatible apps that
install directly on the tablet, this cloud-based service can't, for
instance, be used to open Office documents you receive via email on the iPad.
And, at least at first, the only way you can get files into and out of
OnLive Desktop is through its Web-accessible cloud-storage service. The free
version has no email capability, and the app doesn't support common
file-transfer services like Dropbox or SugarSync. The company says it hopes
to add those.

OnLive Desktop competes not only with the iPad's
Office clones, but with iPad apps that let you remotely access and control
your own PCs and Macs, and thus use Office and other computer software on
those.

Continued in article

Video Messaging and Self-Testing

September 27, 2011 message from Amy Dunbar

Has anyone used Google docs to
create self-tests? I have been creating self-tests in Flash, but I just
discovered that I can create a “form” in Google docs that results in a
self-test. I can edit the form after I have created it, but if I delete a
question it still stays in the Excel doc that records the student answers.
I’m not sure what I am doing wrong.

I am trying to get undergrads to
engage in class, and I thought the Google self-tests might be one way. One
thing I know for sure is that the way I am using Powerpoint doesn’t work.
For example, I developed slides to illustrate a problem step by step. Then
I ask a similar question, and it’s like I’m speaking a different language.
My students just tune out when the slides start going.

If the Google self-test works
like I think it could, I could post a link to a self-test in a web page or
slide, have the students work the question in class and submit the answer,
and then bring up the answers in the Excel sheet to see in real time if
students are understanding the concept. I think clickers would do the same
thing, but I should have adopted those at the beginning of the semester.

I’m open to any other suggestions
you might have.

Amy

September 27, 2011 reply from Rick Lillie

Hi Amy,

Have you considered using VoiceThread as an
alternative to the PowerPoint slides? You can still use PowerPoint slides or
your own slides and mark them up as you talk about each slide. Rather than
audio narration, you can use video narration that displays in a separate
side window to the presentation screen.

This approach works much the same way as if you
projected an image onto a whiteboard in the classroom and then talked to
students while marking up the image. I use this technique in fully online
classes. Students really like this approach. It might get you a better
result than what you describe in your AECM post.

I use Google Docs and Spreadsheets to create an
online scantron type answer sheet for quizzes. The underlying spreadsheet
format is set up in the spreadsheet. The form is tied to the spreadsheet.
You can select a theme to make the form look more appealing to students.

You should be able to modify the spreadsheet and
then resave or recreate the form. Changes should then be reflected in the
online form.

I hope this helps.

Rick Lillie
CalState San Bernardino

September 27, 2011 reply from Ruth Bender

Hi Amy

I don’t use it myself, but
you might like to read this page and the comments below it. @russeltarr has
tweeted about it a few times.

The iPad DecisionSome CPAs swear by the iPad, calling it an
indispensable business tool. Other CPAs believe Apple's tablet is about as
useful as a legless table. This article examines the iPad's strengths and
weaknesses, introduces the top apps and accessories, and gives guidelines for
deciding if the iPad is right for you and your business.
http://email.aicpa.org/cgi-bin15/DM/t/eit20bAne80GTt0Bpwt0Ea

A small army of multitouch tablet computers has
been launched this year to take on Apple's iPad, which has managed to sell
25 million units and attract 90,000 tablet-specific apps in just about 15
months, and is already in its second generation, the iPad 2. So far, none of
these contenders has gained any significant traction with consumers or app
developers.

Now, the world's largest PC maker, Hewlett-Packard,
is entering the fray. On Friday, it will start selling the TouchPad, a
10-inch tablet with a slick, distinctive software interface. The TouchPad
starts at $500, the same entry price as the iPad 2.

Clever Interface

I like the interface a lot. Instead of a screen
full of app icons, the main screen of the TouchPad's operating system,
called webOS, presents running apps as "cards"—large, live rectangles that
you scroll through in a horizontal row.

When you tap a card, it fills the screen and is
ready to use. To minimize it, you just swipe up on the bezel surrounding the
screen. A second swipe takes you to a screen from which you can launch or
download a new app. To get rid of a card, you just flick it upward, and it
disappears. Multiple cards can run in the background.

And these cards are clever. For instance, the
contacts and photo cards combine both local and online content, from sources
like Google and Facebook; and cards with related functions, like an email
message and an attachment you've opened, are stacked atop one another.

You can make Skype video and audio calls directly
from the messaging apps. And if you buy a forthcoming H-P webOS smartphone,
you can link it to the tablet wirelessly, and send and receive voice calls
and text messages from the tablet, or transfer a Web page from the phone by
tapping the phone on the tablet.

Hardware and Battery

But the tablet's hardware is bulbous and heavy
compared with the iPad 2 or the svelte Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, an Android
tablet. Worse, it's missing some key features common on the other tablets,
like a rear camera or even a camera app for taking videos and still
pictures. It has a front camera that can be used only for video chats.

I found the TouchPad's battery life was only 60%
that of the iPad 2. In my standard tablet battery test, where I set the
screen brightness to 75%, keep the Wi-Fi connection active and play local
videos back to back, the TouchPad lasted just 6 hours and 5 minutes,
compared with 10 hours and 9 minutes for the iPad 2. H-P claims 9 hours of
continuous video playback, but that's with Wi-Fi turned off. In mixed use,
battery life was decent. Apps

When H-P bought webOS a year ago this week as part
of its purchase of the system's inventor, Palm, one hope was that the giant
company's clout would attract lots of apps to the platform. But the TouchPad
will launch with just 300 tablet-optimized apps and only 6,200 webOS apps
overall, most written for phones and only 70% of which can run on the
tablet, in a small, phone-size window that can't be expanded. That compares
with 425,000 total apps for the iPad and 200,000 for Android tablets, nearly
all of which can run on tablets even if they aren't optimized for the
tablet.

This first TouchPad has no app, such as Netflix,
for streaming TV shows or movies (though its Web browser, unlike the iPad's,
can run Adobe Flash and can stream videos via the Web). Its version of the
QuickOffice productivity suite, unlike the same product on the iPad, can't
edit documents, but merely displays them. My test unit lacked stores for
directly downloading TV shows, movies and music. H-P says a music store will
be available at launch and a video download store "shortly" after launch.
Glitches

I also ran into plenty of bugs in my tests, even
though H-P said I was testing a production unit. For instance, on various
occasions, the email app failed to display the contents of messages, the
photos app failed to display pictures, and the game "Angry Birds" crashed
repeatedly. All of these problems required a reboot of the device to
resolve.

. . .

Bottom line

H-P stresses that webOS is a platform and that the
TouchPad is just one iteration of it. The company plans to add the operating
system to numerous devices, including laptops, and hopes that this scale
will attract many more apps. And it pledges continuous updates to fix the
current shortcomings.

But, at least for now, I can't recommend the
TouchPad over the iPad 2.

Jensen Comment
All the competitors to iPad have the advantage of being able to play Adobe
Flash.

Question
How can you best publish books, including multimedia and user interactive books,
on the Web?
Note that interactive books may have quizzes and examinations where answers are
sent back for grading.

Answer
There is no optimal software for all authors, because different alternatives
have different features that will appeal to authors in varying degrees. Below
are a few of the leading alternatives.

The main advantage is that most authors are familiar with how to
write in MS Word.

This is the easiest Web alternative for authors who've already
written their books in MS Word. All an author has to do is simply click
on "File save as" and choose the HTM option in place of the usual DOC
option. Updates of older HTM files created in MS Word are done in Word
and the revised document can then be easily saved as an updated HTML
file.

Saving a DOC file to an HTML file enables the book to be viewed in
all Web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Foxfox, Opera, and Safari.

Saving to an HTML file eliminates some MS Word features such as
macros, but authors rarely write books with macros for readers.

MS Word is probably the best alternative for importing other
MS Office content such as Excel and PowerPoint content.

HTML files work well in conjunction with extensive coding like XML
and XBRL ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XMLRDF.htm
For example company filings with the SEC can now be viewed in
interactive XBRL linked from HTML documents. It becomes rather simple
send HTML book readers off to SEC interactive filings on HTML book
pages.

Disadvantages

Saving as an HTML file loses some of the author's desired security
alternatives that are optional for DOC files

Some of the features of imported content from Excel and PowerPoint
may be lost when pasted into the DOC/HTML file in MS Word.

MS Word is not the best authoring alternative for multimedia and
interactive content.

MS Word does not have a lot of the authoring wizards that are
pre-programmed into other alternatives. For example, Toolbook has
various wizards that make writing of examinations and answers to
examinations much easier than writing them in MS Word.

MS Word does not have built-in features for writing learning
simulations and scenarios.

PDF reader files are free and it's easy to update these readers from
Adobe.

Adobe Acrobat has the best security alternatives for protection of
copyrighted material of all the Web publishing alternatives which is the
main reason the major publishing firms choose PDF files when they want
to make books available on the Web. For example, it's possible to make
it impossible to easily select text for cut and paste from a clipboard.

Some of the features of imported content from Excel and PowerPoint
may be lost when pasted into the PDF file in Adobe Acrobat.

MS Word is not the best authoring alternative for multimedia and
interactive content. This content cannot be added in Acrobat since
Acrobat itself is not authoring software.

MS Word does not have a lot of the authoring wizards that are
pre-programmed into other alternatives. For example, Toolbook has
various wizards that make writing of examinations and answers to
examinations much easier than writing them in MS Word.

MS Word does not have built-in features for writing learning
simulations and scenarios.

If you're looking for a way to convert pdf files to
html, this helpful application can do just that. Visitors just need to click
the browse button here to locate the pdf that they wish to transfer. After
doing this, they will supply their own email, and seconds later, they will
have the converted file. This version is compatible with all operating
systems.

HTML authoring software has some features that are not be available
when saving DOC files as HTML files.

FrontPage is more than authoring software. It can be used as a
complete Website system.

Some authors, not me, find Dreamweaver easier to use as an authoring
tool without some of what I call FrontPage bugs and complexities.

Disadvantages

Authoring directly in HTML loses some of the author's desired
security alternatives that are optional for DOC and PDF files

Some of the features of imported content from Excel and PowerPoint
may be lost when pasted into the HTML file..

MS Word is not the best authoring alternative for multimedia and
interactive content.

HTML authoring software does not have a lot of the authoring wizards
that are pre-programmed into other alternatives. For example, Toolbook
has various wizards that make writing of examinations and answers to
examinations much easier than writing them in MS Word.

HTML authoring is not an efficient alternative for pasting in
multimedia.

MS Word does not have built-in features for writing learning
simulations and scenarios.

Author it in
Toolbook
that automatically saves files in HTML/DHTML files

Advantages

Although I've not yet tried the latest version of Toolbook
Instructor, authors who use this software contend it is much easier to
use than HTML software such as FrontPage and Dreamweaver. One of the
main advantages is that shells for writing book chapters are already
pre-programmed. Watch the video at
http://www.toolbook.com/demos/toolBook_demo/index.html

Toolbook authoring software is not commonly provided free by
colleges as part of the installed software that computer centers
pre-install in all college-owned computers using campus wide license
agreements. The single-user license is currently $2,795 for Toolbook
Instructor Version 9.01 as of March 2008. There are group-license
discounts.

Although I've not yet gone back to ToolBook, I was an early Toolbook
enthusiast in the 1990s. One of my constant complaints in those days was
the tendency of the company to send out software before its time and let
customers find the many bugs in the system. The company's technical
support often had not yet discovered the problems or their solutions.
Toolbook today has only a miniscule part of the Web authoring market.
Being small means that it will take longer to discover and correct bugs
vis-a-vis big market share alternatives like MS Word and Adobe Acrobat.
In fairness, however, it is now easier for Toolbook to pre-test its
software than it was back in the days of its bug-saturated OpenScript
scripting code. I'm just about convinced to give
Toolbook another chance for my Web authoring. I've delayed this
long because of memories of the days and weeks I sometimes wasted using
bugged-up OpenScript software.

If the book contains animation and interactive features requiring
DHTML above and beyond simple HTML, this may restrict readers to read
books in a smaller subset of Web browsers that are DHTML compliant.
Fortunately Internet Explorer is DHTML compliant. But if DHTML declines
in popularity among authors worldwide, newer browsers may eliminate
these rather expensive code blocks from browsers. Fortunately there's no
immediate threat of this happening.

DHTML itself is a very inefficient coding/markup scripting
alternative. More than a hundred lines of code may have to be written
for a very simple task. This highly restricts authoring creativity of
animations and interactions. Authors in Toolbook are for all practical
purposes limited to the pre-scripted templates provided in Toolbook.

Most colleges and business firms have firewalls that prevent two-way
communication via DHTML such as when a student fills out the answers to
an examination and then clicks on a "Send" button to transmit the an
answer or set of answers to graders on campus. Some universities allow
their Blackboard servers to receive answer files.

A cheap alternative for
penetrating a firewall is to attach an answer file to an email message
that penetrates campus firewalls. This can even be done via instant
messaging with live graders responding to each answer in real time. But
there are huge security risks to opening email attachments. Students can
innocently or knowingly attach bad things to attached messages that will
destroy your computer. Graders can reduce the risk by telling students
that they will only open attached TXT files such as those generated in
Wordpad.

Another alternative is to run your own server that will allow student
returned answer files to penetrate the firewall (firewalls can be
adjusted for degrees of security). If done right this is enormously
expensive. First you must hire technicians to maintain the system.
Second you much install back up systems such as
RAID.

Another alternative is to hire a commercial online testing service
our course management service, including Blackboard, that allows student
returned answer files to penetrate its firewalls. Such services off
campus,
including Blackboard, will even serve up your entire book, although
it is possible to have them only serve up the examinations and receive
returned student answer files. Some testing services have course
management systems and will serve up and manage entire courses and
tutorials.
Examples such as
eCollege are reviewed at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

Bob:
In respect to sending exam scores and exam answers as email
attachments - it really isn't effective in just about any content
authoring tool that offers it - Camtasia, Toolbook or Captivate
because of security issues. Before the email goes out it goes to the
email client and the student can edit the exam score if they wished.
Because of security issues the "owner" of the system should be the
only one to control outgoing messages.

Youth of today prefer video and animated games to reading an many,
many instances. Even us venerable readers often prefer short video
tutorials of complicated tasks rather than having to read the manual.
For example, I much prefer to watch a video on how to install and
operate hardware/software than having to read the confusing manual.
Demonstrating is often a better pedagogy than reading.

The video alternative is better for certain types of handicapped
users such as attention deficit readers, partly blind readers, and users
who like an easy choice of subtitles for use in alternative languages
such as English subtitles to Japanese learning videos.

Adobe Flash interactive videos can be created from the relatively
inexpensive
Camtasia
Producer software suite that offers various video compression
choices including Adobe Flash. Another alternative is Adobe's
Captivate3. Interactive Flash videos
allow users to navigate nonlinearly through video modules. For example,
it is easy to repeat short segments on the fly or drill down into
details when a user chooses to drill down further or skip details when
desired. I find interactive video authoring to be somewhat complicated
for authors but neat for readers.

It is possible to author books that are viewed by users as streaming
video rather than files that have to be downloaded into a user's
computer. This has the advantage of not requiring large amounts of
storage capacity on a users computer. This also makes it much more
difficult for users to save and modify the video files. It is possible
to capture and save streaming video, but its somewhat technical and
there probably will be a downgrading of quality for inexpensive
capturing alternatives ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#StreamingMedia

Disadvantages

Even interactive video cannot be navigated as efficiently as text
and large tables. A reader of text may speed read and scan paragraphs
and tables at will rather than have to live with the navigation
alternatives that authors pre-programmed into the video.

Video files, even highly compressed video files, are enormously
costly in terms of massive file size. They can be put on DVD disks or
auxiliary storage such as thumb drives. But downloading on the Web may
be very slow for big files. It is best to author in multiple smaller
files than huge files, although this can limited interactive navigation
through a video book.

Streaming video overcomes the file storage problems, but there are
drawbacks since users of streaming video must generally be on high
bandwidth Internet connections. Also streaming videos must be served up
from streaming video broadcasters. Most colleges do not broadcast
streaming video, but there are commercial broadcasters available to
authors. For example see the broadcast service available from Camtasia
ScreenCast ---
http://www.techsmith.com/screencast.asp

Video files are not optimal for simulation and game authoring,
although they may be quite useful as modules within simulations and
games.

My experience also tells me that there's something to being able to store
your life's work in hard copy on library shelves.

When I recently bought a 64-bit Dell Studio 17 Laptop, Dell assigned me to a
good guy named Charlie Mullins in the Sales Division. Charlie not only held my
hand so to speak and tracked my order before my new computer was built, he
continues to hold my hand figuratively-speaking throughout my three-year onsite
service warranty that I paid extra for when I bought my computer.

When I have a hardware problem, I must pass through Charlie to get access to
a Dell hardware technician who then walks me through some tests to determine if
I really have a hardware problem. On this Charlie is very efficient and merely
forwards my phone call to the hardware specialist. I am having troubles with a
flaky on-off switch, and the hardware technician spent an hour with me yesterday
on the phone guiding me through a series of tests. He even remotely took charge
operating my new computer. It turns out that I really do need a new switch and
possibly a new motherboard such at a hardware technician will soon visit my
house. Since I live in the far-away New Hampshire mountains some Dell technician
may have to travel all the way from Boston, thereby giving me his entire day and
maybe more just to replace a switch (I think the motherboard is fine).

I also have a problem in that a huge part of my life's work producing
educational media files will run perfectly on my old Dell 32-bit XP laptop, but
my life's work will not run on my new Dell 64-bit laptop due to what a popup
claims are missing codecs. It turns out that this is a huge problem for
Microsoft to the extent that the 64-bit Windows Media Player in Windows 7 is not
the default WMP player you see on your screen. Microsoft embeds a 32-bit WMP
player in Windows 7 that is the default player in your new 64-bit Windows 7
machine. The reason is the shortage of 64-bit codecs for the world of media
playback. But if you choose to do so, a few techies in the world know how to
change to a 64-bit WMP:
WMP 64-bit switch ---
http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/10/25/how-to-set-64-bit-windows-media-player-12-wmp12-as-default-player/

Things get more complicated when I have a software problem under warranty on
my new computer. Dell only offers a warranty on applications that are built into
the Windows 7 operating system and not other software that Dell installs such as
MS Office software. Both the 32-bit and 64-bit WMP applications are buried in
the operating system, so I argued with Charlie Mullins that my WMP problem is
under warranty. He's now writing up a proposal pleading with Level 2 technicians
at Dell to talk to me.

I turns out that I do not have to go through Charlie to reach Level 1
technicians at Dell. I first did so with my codec problems. Two Level 1
technicians concluded that my codec problem cannot be solved. I will have to
keep keep my old XP computer running for the rest of my life if I want to replay
my life's work. And so will any other accounting educator and researcher who
wants to view the videos of my professional career.

This just does not seem right, so I want access to Level 2 experts at Dell.
However, to do so I have to describe my problem to Charlie Mullins who then must
write up a formal proposal on my behalf to try to convince Level 2 experts to
consider my problem. Two Level 1 technicians at Dell who declared my problem
unsolvable privately admitted they did not understand problems of missing codecs
and how to resolve the problems of not having codecs present in the Windows 7
operating system that were and still are present in the old Windows XP operating
system.

When sending Charlie an email describing my problem I asked him to try to run
any one of these sample accounting theory wmv video files on an XP machine and a
Windows 7 machine ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5341/
In my case all the wmv videos run perfectly on my old Windows XP machine and not
on my new 64-bit machine. By the way, many people have by now contacted me
claiming they cannot run my accounting education and research videos on their
64-bit computers, although a few have mysteriously managed to get them to run on
their 64-bit computers. In most cases they don't fully understand why they work
on their 64-bit Windows operating machines.

By the way, the Quicktime player from Apple never would play my wmv files.
Nor will any other video player such as VLC that I installed play my life's work
on a 64-bit machine even though these players work fine on my 32-bit machine.

Charlie wrote back and informed me that he cannot try to run my sample videos
linked above on a 64-bit computer, because nobody in his Sales Division at Dell
has a 64-bit computer even though virtually all the computers sold by this
division are now 64-bit computers. I'm not sure Charlie was supposed to let this
out, but to me this tells me something about Dell still having worries about
leaving the 32-bit architecture.

One sign of getting too old is when years of a professor's work can no
longer be used under current versions of hardware and software. It's a little
like having a double tree for horses on a wagon in the era of tractors or an old
threshing machine in the era of harvesting combines.

The real definitive sign is when your wife wants you evaluated on the PBS
"Antiques Road Show."

My experience also tells me that there's something to being able to store your
life's work in hard copy on library shelves.

A Bit of HistoryThis reminds me of when Apple used to come out with new versions of the Mac
operating system that were not backwards compatible. I recall sharing a cab in
Manhattan with the University of Waterloo's Efrim Boritz years ago. Efrim
grumbled that Apple had destroyed years of his work by not making the new
version of the Mac operating system sufficiently compatible with an updated
version.

For years one huge advantage of Microsoft was insistance on making new
versions of DOS compatible with older versions which led to millions of lines of
code that would've been unnecessary if new versions of DOS were not backwards
compatible.

That does not seem to be the case today.

Boo on TechSmith! Boo on Microsoft! Boo on Apple!

They are sometimes uncaringly destroying years of our work with new upgrades.

Taking up the command line is easier if you have a
specific problem you’re trying to solve. For me, the problem was that I
wanted to do all of my writing in a
plain text format, like Markdownor
LaTeX. But I need to be able to share my writing
in a variety of formats: HTML for the web, PDF for printed documents or
academic writing, and occasionally RTF or Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.

The best way I’ve found to move between these
formats isPandoc.
Pandoc is a command line tool written by a philosophy
professor, John
MacFarlane. Its general use is to take a document
in one format and convert it to another. You can get an idea of the wide
variety of formats Pandoc can translate by looking at an
enlargement of the header diagram.

Here’s an example of how this works. Suppose that
you have a Markdown document like the one we created for the post on
Markdown. (View
pandoc-example.markdown on GitHub.)
You can convert this to a number of text formats with a simple terminal
command:

That command calls pandoc, tells it
which file to convert (pandoc-example.markdown) and tells it
which file to export (e.g., pandoc-example.html). Pandoc
figures out what types of files these are from the extension, or you can
pass it additional arguments. For some of the formats, you can convert the
other way. For example, you could convert LaTex to Markdown or to a Word
DOCX, or HTML to Markdown or LaTeX. To convert to PDF, though, you’ll need
to have LaTeX installed on your system.

If you're looking for a way to convert pdf files to
html, this helpful application can do just that. Visitors just need to click
the browse button here to locate the pdf that they wish to transfer. After
doing this, they will supply their own email, and seconds later, they will
have the converted file. This version is compatible with all operating
systems.

Author it in simulation/game authoring software, including
Second Choice virtual learning

Video and computer games have huge attractions to 21st Century
learners who grew up enthralled with playing such games in arcades and
at home. These games are a way of reaching certain learners who are
turned off by more traditional pedagogy. You can read more about
learning games and edutainment at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
The above site also links to some relatively inexpensive software for
authoring learning games.

Disadvantages

Simulation, learning games, and virtual learning systems sometime
sound better on paper than they deliver in real life. These can be quite
time consuming for students relative to other alternatives for a defined
set of learning content. You can read about some of the problems at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#SecondLife

Artificial worlds are just that --- artificial. It is only possible
to program in a miniscule number of factors from the myriad of
contingency factors and combinations of factors in the real world.

Its one thing to author a book or a tutorial. It's quite
another to manage an entire course with software systems. Course
(learning) management software (CMS/LMS) software often includes
software for authoring books and lesson tutorials. CMS software, for
example, often integrates learning modules with e-Mail chat rooms and
other student networks.

CMS software can offers different levels of security. For example,
alternatives like Blackboard and Moodle allow authors to control access
to students enrolled in a course rather than making the materials
available to the world on a Web server.

Disadvantages

Authoring software embedded in CMS/LMS systems often is not a full
featured as software designed for book, simulation, game, and virtual
world learning.

Thanks for the update. At one time ToolBook was my main man, but those
days are long gone. ToolBook has morphed through many changes in ownership
and codes, but it does somehow manage a Darwinian evolution. It evolved from
early versions that required authors to be techies in coding in OpenScript
to later versions that feature over a dozen templates for relatively simple
course authoring --- almost plug and play.

Learning content that you create in ToolBook is
distributed as HTML and delivered through almost any Learning Management
System (LMS) available, including the SumTotal LMS, other SCORM/AICC-compliant
LMS, or standalone systems.

Bob:
I'll be developing in Toolbook, and will share some of my output, but I am
very busy until the end of the year at least.

They have become more aggressive in pricing - A
single license is now in the $2,800 range, and I am not aware of any
academic pricing. I usually shy away from academic licenses, since I sell my
output in the commercial market, and most academic licenses prohibit that.
Most content authoring tools like Toolbook do not have royalty sharing
arrangements. You are paying big bucks for the product, why pay more?

Jeff Rhodes atwww.plattecanyon.comis the smartest, most productive multimedia programmer
in the world (IMHO) created a very profitable private corporation around
Toolbook and multimedia development.

I am writing this in Microsoft Word, hardly an
unusual way to author a document. But I'm not using Word as you know it—part
of the large, complex Microsoft Office suite installed on your computer's
hard drive. Instead, I am using a new, streamlined version of Word that for
the first time resides on remote servers you reach through the Internet.

This new version of Word is used inside a Web
browser. It works on both Windows PCs and Macs, and via the newer versions
of the major browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and
Chrome. It's free and it doesn't require you to have regular Office on your
computer.

Word isn't the only Office component that's now
available in a free online version. Microsoft has created similar simplified
versions of Excel, PowerPoint and its OneNote note-taking program as part of
the free online suite called Office Web Apps, which is available at
office.live.com. To use the new online Office, you'll need a free account
for the company's broader Windows Live online service.

WSJ's Personal Technology columnist Walt Mossberg
takes a look at the new free, online version of Microsoft Office, called
Office Web Apps. It's a stripped down version of the familiar desktop
edition of Office, and runs on both PCs and Macs. Walt says it may be all
you'll ever need in an Office suite. Microsoft is also releasing a new
version of its traditional desktop Office for Windows next week, called
Office 2010. But in my view, the online edition is the most interesting new
development for consumers in this round of updates. It's part of the broader
trend toward cloud computing—doing tasks online rather than with desktop
programs. And it's meant to help the software giant compete with rival
online office suites from competitors like Google and Zoho.

I've been testing Office Web Apps on both Windows
and Mac computers, and in all four major browsers, and I like it. It has
some downsides and is still a work in progress. It lacks many of the more
sophisticated features of the local, desktop version of Office. In fact,
Microsoft—apparently trying to protect its profitable desktop suite—refers
to Office Web Apps as a "companion" to desktop Office, for "light" work.

Mossberg Mailbox Mossberg on buying an iPad for
children But these are capable, if simpler, programs that look and feel like
their desktop counterparts and they will likely meet the needs of many
consumers who produce basic documents, even if they don't own desktop
Office. Also, the new Web Apps are connected to a generous 25 gigabytes of
free online storage for your documents, via a companion Microsoft online
storage system called SkyDrive.

Another big benefit: Microsoft boasts its Office
Web Apps produce documents that use the same file formats as the desktop
programs and thus, look fully accurate when opened in desktop Office. The
company calls this "fidelity." In my tests, this claim held true, at least
on my Windows PC. (A revised version of Microsoft Office for the Mac, tuned
to work with Web Apps, is in the works.)

The new version of the desktop Office suite also
has many new features, but a lot of these are for power users or corporate
users, and, overall, it isn't nearly as big a change as its predecessor,
Office 2007. Among the new desktop features consumers will notice and use
are the extension of the consolidated top tool bar called the "Ribbon,"
introduced in the 2007 version in most Office programs, to Outlook; a new
unified view for printing, sharing and previewing documents, called
"Backstage"; and richer graphics. You can also now customize the Ribbon.

In my tests of the streamlined Office Web Apps, I
was able to use a variety of fonts and styles, insert and resize photos, and
create tables. And I was able to view my documents, though not edit them, on
an iPhone and iPad. This also works with other mobile devices.

One glitch I ran into in the Word Web App was that,
if you use a tab to start a paragraph, it changes the left margin of each
subsequent line. Microsoft says this is a bug and it is working to fix it.

Another downside for some users may be that the Web
Apps only directly open documents from, and save them to, your online
SkyDrive storage, not your hard disk. So you have to upload files from your
hard disk to SkyDrive to edit them in the Web Apps. And, like most
cloud-based programs, they can only be used when you're online.

There are numerous things you may be used to doing
in desktop Office that can't be done in the online version. For instance,
you can't drag photos by the corners to resize them, embed videos, create
slide transitions or add new spreadsheet charts.

You can, with one click, open a Web version of your
document in the full desktop program, to take advantage of richer editing.
However, this only works with certain combinations of browsers and desktop
Office versions.

Two of the Web apps, Excel and OneNote, allow
multiple users to log on and work on the same document together. The others
don't yet. In fact, in my tests, I couldn't open a Word document locally
until I had closed it online, and vice versa. Microsoft says it is working
on expanding simultaneous use to all the apps.

Office Web Apps are a good start for Microsoft at
bringing its productivity expertise to the Web, and may be all many
consumers need for creating simple documents.

Greg Smith, chief information officer at George Fox,
said the iPad's technological limitations—its inability to multitask and print,
and its limited storage space—have kept students dependent on their notebooks.
"That's the problem with the iPad: It's not an independent device," he said.
"Classroom iPad Programs Get Mixed Response," by Travis Kaya,
Chronicle of Higher Education, September 20, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Classroom-iPad-Programs-Get/27046/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

A few weeks after a handful of colleges gave away
iPads to determine the tablet's place in the classroom, students and faculty
seem confident that the device has some future in academe.

But they're still not exactly sure where that might
be.

At those early-adopter schools, iPads are competing
with MacBooks as the students' go-to gadget for note taking and Web surfing.
Zach Kramberg, a first-year student at George Fox University, which allowed
incoming students to choose between a complimentary iPad or MacBook this
fall, said the tablet has become an important tool for recording and
organizing lecture notes. He also takes the device with him to the
university's dimly lit chapel so he can follow along with an app called
iBible. "The iPad's very easy to use once you figure them out," he said.

Still, Mr. Kramberg said the majority of students
rely on bound Bibles in chapel and stick to pen and paper or MacBooks in the
classroom.

Greg Smith, chief information officer at George
Fox, said the iPad's technological limitations—its inability to multitask
and print, and its limited storage space—have kept students dependent on
their notebooks. "That's the problem with the iPad: It's not an independent
device," he said.

Mr. Smith said that the 67 students—10 percent of
the freshman class—that opted for iPads over MacBooks are really excited
about the technology but have not been "pushing the capabilities" of the
device.

Caitlin Corning, a history professor at George Fox,
said it's been hard to meld iPads into the curriculum because only a small
subset of her students has the device. Ms. Corning used the iPad as a
portable teaching tool during a student art trip to Europe this summer,
flashing Van Gogh works on the screen when they were in the places he
painted them. Translating that portable-classroom experience into her
classroom back in Oregon, however, has not been easy. "It's still a work in
progress," she said. "It's a little complex because only some of the
freshmen have iPads."

Faculty members at Seton Hill University, which
gave iPads to all full-time students, are working with the developers of an
e-book app called Inkling to come up with new ways to integrate the iPad
into classroom instruction. The textbook software—one of many in
development—allows students to access interactive graphics and add notes as
they read along. Faculty members can access the students' marginalia to see
whether they understand the text. They can also remotely receive and answer
questions from students in real time.

Catherine Giunta, an associate professor of
business at Seton Hill, said the technology has changed the way students
interact with their textbooks and how she interacts with her students. While
reviewing the margin notes of a student in her marketing class, Ms. Giunta
was able to pinpoint and correct a student's apparent misunderstanding of a
concept that was going to be covered in class the next day. "The
misunderstanding may not have been apparent until [the student] did a
written report," Ms. Giunta said. "I could really give her individualized
instruction and guidance."

As students and faculty members around the country
feel around for new ways to integrate the iPad into academic life, a handful
of programs are taking a more formal approach to finding its place in the
classroom. Students in the Digital Cultures and Creativity program at the
University of Maryland at College Park will turn a critical eye on the iPad
as a study tool while integrating it into their curriculum. "I think
[students are] taking a sort of wait-and-see approach," said Matthew
Kirschenbaum, the program director and an associate professor of English.

Similarly, the faculty at Indiana University has
formed a 24-member focus group to evaluate iPad-driven teaching strategies.
The groups have started meeting this month to assess how their iPad
experiments are going, with a preliminary report due in January. "It's meant
to be a supportive, collaborative, formalized conversation," said Stacy
Morrone, Indiana's associate dean of learning technologies. "We don't expect
that everything will go perfectly."

Although not entirely related to the substance of
the iPad educational debate, a pilot program at Long Island University was
thrust into the spotlight over the weekend in an animated e-mail exchange
between a college journalist and Apple's founder Steve Jobs. As Gawker
reports it, complaints about a few unreturned media inquiries from a
deadline-stressed reporter led to a curt "leave us alone" response from the
Apple chief executive.

In the e-mail chain, Mr. Jobs said, "Our goals do
not include helping you get a good grade."

Although not MOOC complete courses, there
are over 2,000 free learning modules at Kahn Academy, including some
advanced-learning accounting modules:Khan Academy Home Page ---
http://www.khanacademy.org/
This site lists the course categories but there are more courses than
fit undert these categories. It's best to search for a topic of
interest.

YouTube advertisers increase 40% in year--- Top brands eager to reach millennial
consumers have boosted the number of advertisers on Google
Inc.’s video site by 40% in the past year, the Financial
Times reports. YouTube also said advertisers from the top 100 brands
based on a ranking by Interbrand were spending 60% more than last
year.

Jensen Comment
This reveals the changing times in free communication, marketing,
entertainment, education, and training --- yes free education and
training. YouTube is playing a huge role in education and training as
major universities and training companies now have YouTube channels for
a vast amount of training and education videos.

But featured channels are almost a
miniscule part of what you can learn on YouTube. For example, you can
learn how to operate or trouble shoot almost any device in the market by
searching YouTube in a clever way. You can learn how to do virtually
anything in Excel via YouTube. You can learn how to analyze financial
statements and prepare tax returns on YouTube. In fact there is very
little that you cannot learn from YouTube.

My problem with YouTube learning is that
it is less efficient than first trying other sources, especially
Wikipedia. You can efficiently scan millions of Wikipedia modules with
word searches and in many instances their table of contents. For
example, compare searches of the "Capital Asset Pricing Model" in
Wikipedia versus YouTube. Learning about the CAPM from YouTube takes
much more time than learning about this model from Wikipedia.

I have two sons home for the summer asking if I
know of any great resources to help them get ahead of Intermediate
Accounting as they approach the fall semester. I figured I would go to the
best source I know of to help them out – these two listservs.

So can you direct me to any on-line and other
resources that may get them studying for Intermediate Accounting I and
Intermediate Accounting II?

Also, what advice would you give them on how to
approach these courses (one is in I and the older in II)?

I will also be sharing this on our student site…

On another note – we are working in an
International Pavilion on CPA Island in Second Life and our Accounting
Eductaion Pavilion (see details atwww.cpaisland.comandwww.slacpa.org ).
We continue to offer free kiosks with links to your
colleges and universities and free areas to meet as classes. We have an
interne working this summer who can give you a demo and show you around –
just send an e-mail to my attention ad mention the CPA Island.

Then search for the term "accounting" at
http://www.youtube.com/education?b=400
Scroll down to find videos that might be relevant to intermediate accounting
topics. Some of these videos are more up to date than even the latest
textbooks.
Some of these videos are from the top teachers or top CPA firm leaders (like
Jim Turley's videos) in the world.
Also note that if you search out the instructor (usually found at her/his
university) you will often find more course materials available for
downloading. Also email messages to these instructors may result in more
shared learning materials.

But more importantly, Tom, consider the goals of your two sons in
studying for intermediate accounting. The overriding goal of an intermediate
accounting student is to eventually pass the CPA examination. For studying
intermediate accounting I would have your sons dig directly into a CPA
examination review course and focus on the answers to CPA examination
questions in the topical areas identified above in intermediate accounting
textbooks. They have to pick and chose topics found in an intermediate
accounting textbook, because many CPA examination questions come from other
courses such as advanced accounting and governmental accounting and tax
accounting and managerial accounting.

There are some topics that are probably not totally up to date in even
the latest available intermediate accounting textbooks. One is IFRS
although, unless your sons will be taking intermediate accounting from an
IFRS nut, I would probably not worry too much about technical IFRS problems
on the CPA examination in the near future. However, great free materials for
learning IFRS are available at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#IFRSlearning

In a typical intermediate accounting two semester sequence, much of the
first semester is spent reviewing basic accounting (especially in
universities that receive a large number of community college transfer
students). If your sons need video reviews of basic accounting, I highly
recommend Susan Crosson's video lectures. The links are at the bottom of the
page at
http://www.youtube.com/SusanCrosson
Look for "Financial Videos Organized by Topic."

Members of the American Accounting Association, including student
members, can find some instructional helper materials at the AAA Commons ---
http://commons.aaahq.org/pages/home
Click on the menu choice "Teaching" and then "Browse resources."

Implied in all the above recommendations is a learning pedagogy that
pretty much entails memory aiding and abetting in a traditional manner
(study the problems and then study the textbook answers). At the other
extreme there is better and longer-lasting metacognitive learning such as
the award-winning BAM pedagogy (for an intermediate accounting two-course
sequence) invented by Catanach, Croll, and Grinacker ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm
This pedagogy is more like the real world where your supervisor gives you a
problem to solve and you go out and solve it any way you can. You can study
BAM's problems, but there are no answers provided to study. Students have to
teach themselves by seeking out the answers from anywhere in the world.

Although the BAM pedagogy would be much more time consuming for your
sons, you can probably get the Hydromate Case and some of the instructional
support materials from Tony Catanach ---
anthony.catanach@villanova.edu
If Tony is not available, Noah Barsky can help ---
noah.barsky@villanova.edu

By the way, at the University of Virginia, where the BAM pedagogy was
born, the passage rate on the CPA examination rose dramatically after
switching to the BAM pedagogy in intermediate accounting, This is not
surprising since you remember best those things you had to learn on your
own. Of course many students looking for an easy way out hate the BAM
pedagogy.

Without diminishing learning outcomes, automated
teaching software can reduce the amount of time professors spend with
students and could substantially reduce the cost of instruction, according
to new research.

In experiments at six public universities, students
assigned randomly to statistics courses that relied heavily on
“machine-guided learning” software -- with reduced face time with
instructors -- did just as well, in less time, as their counterparts in
traditional, instructor-centric versions of the courses. This largely held
true regardless of the race, gender, age, enrollment status and family
background of the students.

The
studycomes at a time when “smart” teaching
software is being
increasingly includedin conversations about
redrawing the economics of higher education. Recent investments by
high-profile universities in “massively open online courses,” or MOOCs, has
elevated the notion that technology has reached a tipping point: with the
right design, an online education platform, under the direction of a single
professor, might be capable of delivering meaningful education to hundreds
of thousands of students at once.

The new research from the nonprofit organization
Ithaka was seeking to prove the viability of a less expansive application of
“machine-guided learning” than the new MOOCs are attempting -- though one
that nevertheless could have real implications for the costs of higher
education.

The study, called “Interactive Learning Online at
Public Universities,” involved students taking introductory statistics
courses at six (unnamed) public universities. A total of 605 students were
randomly assigned to take the course in a “hybrid” format: they met in
person with their instructors for one hour a week; otherwise, they worked
through lessons and exercises using an artificially intelligent learning
platform developed by learning scientists at Carnegie Mellon University’s
Open Learning Initiative.

Researchers compared these students against their
peers in the traditional-format courses, for which students met with a live
instructor for three hours per week, using several measuring sticks: whether
they passed the course, their performance on a standardized test (the
Comprehensive Assessment of Statistics), and the final exam for the course,
which was the same for both sections of the course at each of the
universities.

The results will provoke science-fiction
doomsayers, and perhaps some higher-ed traditionalists. “Our results
indicate that hybrid-format students took about one-quarter less time to
achieve essentially the same learning outcomes as traditional-format
students,” report the Ithaka researchers.

The robotic software did have disadvantages, the
researchers found. For one, students found it duller than listening to a
live instructor. Some felt as though they had learned less, even if they
scored just as well on tests. Engaging students, such as professors might by
sprinkling their lectures with personal anecdotes and entertaining asides,
remains one area where humans have the upper hand.

But on straight teaching the machines were judged
to be as effective, and more efficient, than their personality-having
counterparts.

It is
not the first timethe software used in the
experiment, developed over the last five years or so by Carnegie Mellon’s
Open Learning Initiative, has been proven capable of teaching students
statistics in less time than a traditional course while maintaining learning
outcomes. So far that research has failed to persuade many traditional
institutions to deploy the software -- ostensibly for fear of shortchanging
students and alienating faculty with what is liable to be seen as an attempt
to use technology as a smokescreen for draconian personnel cuts.

But the authors of the new report, led by William
G. Bowen, the former president of Princeton University, hope their study --
which is the largest and perhaps the most rigorous to date on the
effectiveness of machine-guided learning -- will change minds.

“As several leaders of higher education made clear
to us in preliminary conversations, absent real evidence about learning
outcomes there is no possibility of persuading most traditional colleges and
universities, and especially those regarded as thought leaders, to push hard
for the introduction of [machine-guided] instruction” on their campuses.

Milwaukee —
Digital natives? The idea that students are superengaged finders of
online learning materials once struck Glenda Morgan, e-learning
strategist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as “a load
of hooey.” Students, she figured, probably stick with the textbooks and
other content they’re assigned in class.

Not quite. The preliminary
results of a multiyear study of undergraduates’ online study habits,
presented by Ms. Morgan at a conference on blended learning here this
week, show that most students shop around for digital texts and videos
beyond the boundaries of what professors assign them in class.

It’s nothing new
to hear that students
supplementtheir studies with other
universities’ online lecture videos. But Ms. Morgan’s research—backed by
the National Science Foundation, based on 14 focus-group interviews at a
range of colleges, and buttressed by a large online survey going on
now—paints a broader picture of how they’re finding content, where
they’re getting it, and why they’re using it.

Ms. Morgan borrows the
phrase “free-range learning” to describe students’ behavior, and she
finds that they generally shop around for content in places educators
would endorse. Students seem most favorably inclined to materials from
other universities. They mention lecture videos from Stanford and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology far more than the widely
publicized Khan Academy, she says. If they’re on a pre-med or
health-science track, they prefer recognized “brands” like the Mayo
Clinic. Students often seek this outside content due to dissatisfaction
with their own professors, Ms. Morgan says.

The study should be
welcome news for government agencies, universities, and others in the
business of publishing online libraries of educational content—although
students tend to access these sources from the “side door,” like via a
Google search for a very specific piece of information.

But the study also
highlights the challenge facing professors and librarians. Students
report relying on friends to get help and share resources, Ms. Morgan
says, whereas their responses suggest “much less of a role” for
“conventional authority figures.”

They “don’t want to ask
librarians or tutors in the study center or stuff like that,” she says.
“It’s more the informal networks that they’re using.”

Ms. Morgan confesses to
some concerns about her own data. She wonders how much students are
“telling me what I want to hear.” She also worries that she’s tapping
into a disproportionate slice of successful students.

We're getting close to the tail end of the
36-week-long experiment called #change11, or “the mother of all MOOCs.”

How can I tell?

First, I'm getting ready to facilitate my week, exploring Digital
Identities. I'm second-last in the lineup, so the fact that I'm on deck
means the whole undertaking is drawing to a close.

But it's also clear we're winding down because the #change11 conversation
hubs have begun to resemble, uh, ghost-towns. Once there were lively
debates and intense exchanges. As the winter wore into the spring of the
year, though, the tumbleweeds began to tickle.

Note to self: next time you facilitate a MOOC module, pick Week #2, not Week
#35.

Any course that runs from September through May requires stamina. When that
course is voluntary on the part of both learners and facilitators, and runs
as a series of totally separate modules, the drop-off can be fairly
significant. Erm, even my own participation as a student has crawled to a
stop over the last month or two.

I find myself wondering if the other learners will be keener than I've been?
Am I going to throw a MOOC and have nobody show up?

I suppose it doesn't matter. I'm a teacher at heart. I'll put the work into
developing my one-week course whether there are going to be 3 students or
300. But as I'm preparing, I'm thinking about what it means to facilitate in
a truly social, networked, voluntary environment like #change11.

Or the internet.

As the awareness of the MOOC experiment grows, the term is being
increasingly applied to grand-scale enterprises like the Stanford AI course
and MITx. While heady, this blurs some very important distinctions.

The MOOC model from which #change11 originates was built on the connectivist
learning theory of George Siemens and Stephen Downes. Highly social in
format, these courses tend to be experimental, non-linear, and deeply
dialogic and participatory. Contributions from participants frequently
direct the course of discussion, and the connections and ideas built between
learners can be considered as valuable as the knowledge expounded by the
facilitator.

On the other hand, the MOOC models offered by the big universities tend
towards formalized curricula, content delivery, and verification of
completed learning objectives.

Far more embedded in traditional paradigms of knowledge and teaching, these
courses only harness the connectivity of social media insofar as they enable
masses of people to link themselves to the prestige of a big-name
institution. They offer discussion boards, but their purpose is
content-focused, not connection-focused.

If I were teaching in an MITx-style course, I'd have a very different module
ahead of me, one far more familiar to me as a higher ed instructor.

I've been teaching for eighteen years. I profess to be in favour of
learner-centered classrooms. But until this MOOC module, every single course
I've taught has on some level obliged the students to be there. I am
accustomed to having the institutional powers of status, credentialism, and
grading backing me in the classroom.

In the connectivist MOOC model, I don't.

There is no bonus for learners who participate in my week of #change11. They
won't get a badge at the end, and there is no certification announcing they
completed anything. There's nothing specific for them to complete, unless I
design an exit goal as part of the week's activities. But that would be MY
exit goal: not theirs. They don't get to put the word MIT on their CV. And
while some weeks of the #change11 MOOC have allowed participants to connect
with leaders in the learning and technologies field – Howard Rheingold,
Pierre Levy – I'm among the less well-known of the 30-plus facilitators in
the year's lineup. They won't even get the relational perk of engaging with
somebody famous.

Continued in article

April 29, 2012 message from Mark Lewis

This is an interview with Sebastian Thrun, formerly of
Stanford and still associated with Google. In my ideal
world, every faculty member and a large fraction of the
administration and staff would watch the last half of this
video. The first half is worth watching if you have an
interest in Google Glass, autonomous cars, or Google X
projects in general. The second half talks about his views
and what he is doing in education. He is the person who
taught an AI course online that had 160,000 students enroll
and had 23,000 students complete it. In this interview he
describes how this impacted him so much that he left his
tenured position at Stanford. The lack of personal contact
he talks about in his classroom does not apply in most
Trinity classrooms, however, a cost of $0 for something that
many students find as more personal than a large lecture
hall does have the potential to change the economics of
higher education.

Jensen Comment
Having taught both Fortran and COBOL at one point in my career, I will pass on
this opportunity to upgrade my programming skills. However, these sound like
valuable free resources for the younger generation headed for college or that
generation of unemployable history majors seeking new skills.

This week, IBM announced its next group of IBM Fellows, seven
of its employees who share, according to the press release, "a
commitment to tackling the world's biggest problems with ingenuity,
invention and inspiration." The designation is a big deal for IBM, and
over the years only 238 staff members have been so honored.

One of the more
interesting choices this time is Jeff Jonas, a 47-year old chief
scientist with the company whoblogs here.
Jonas never graduated from college with any degree
but is clearly one of the smarter people you'll ever come across. He is
also quite a character.

Unlike many of his fellow
Fellows - who have resumes that you might have trouble parsing - Jonas
has lived a very interesting life and worked on numerous problems that
are easily understood by the rest of us.

Jonas came to IBM
through a 2005 acquisition of Systems Research and Development, a
company that he founded in 1985 to handle labor reporting, inventory
management and other back-office systems consulting. One of his jobs was
designing the casino security systems in Las Vegas, where he currently
lives. He worked for the surveillance intelligence group of several
casinos, and automated various manual processes, adding facial
recognition software that was key to slowing down the MIT card counting
group. "We built [another] system to immediately identify risk in real
time so they could get these people out of the casino quickly." This
software is still offered by IBM as its
InfoSphere Identity Insightevent processing
and identity tracking technology.

Jonas is one of these
people that look at the world with very careful thinking, always
searching for actionable patterns. For example, he helped use his casino
risk-management system to track down lost family members after the
Katrina flooding of New Orleans. He and his team integrated data across
15 web sites - these web sites were being used by people who said they
were seeking family members with those seeking them. I was impressed by
how he structured his algorithm so it wasn't going to be used by bill
collectors, for example.

He calls this
perpetual analytics and sense-making to keep track of data changes and
to help advise decision-makers in real time. "As information changes,
you want to be able to reconsider earlier decisions. If you want to
prevent really bad things from happening, you want to be able to monitor
risks and trends while they are happening." You want to monitor the
motion of the data, as it were.

His
current internal IBM project is called G2. The
idea is to "make sense of new observations as they happen, fast enough
to do something about it, while the transaction is still happening." His
work is looking at how to commingle diverse data and weave them together
- especially when things are the same, such as people named Billy and
William, who could be the same person. "If you can count things that are
the same, you can analyze them better and understand how they are
related. It is a bit of a breakthrough technology," he told me in an
interview today. "I took what I developed for the casinos and made it
more generalized and easier to use." He and IBM plan to offer G2
sometime soon for the paying business public.

More than 400 colleges and universities have set up
channels on YouTube as part of the YouTube EDU section of the popular video
site, but university officials admit they are still experimenting with the
service and learning what types of videos resonate with off-campus
audiences.

With data provided by YouTube, The Chronicle has
determined the 10 most popular videos on YouTube EDU of the 2010-11 academic
year (from June 2010 to June 2011). Some college officials stress that
popularity is not always their main goal—because many colleges upload
lectures and study materials designed for those enrolled in the courses.
Still, the list gives a sense of the variety of videos colleges post and
their impact.

Star-studded commencement speeches seem to be the
best way for colleges to draw viewers. Four graduation videos made it onto
the top-10 list, and three of the four featured high-profile celebrity
speakers: Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, and Conan O’Brien. According to
YouTube officials, searches on the site for the phrase “commencement speech”
have increased eightfold since 2008.

But the biggest hit of the year focused on a
graduating student rather than a star speaker. UC Berkeley’s video,
“Paralyzed student, Austin Whitney, walks at graduation,” topped the list,
with over 471,000 views. The clip shows Mr. Whitney, a graduating senior who
was paralyzed from the waist down before entering college, walking to
receive his diploma, aided by a mechanized exoskeleton that UC Berkeley
engineers designed for him.

Robotics videos were also crowd pleasers this year.
The University of Pennsylvania’s baseball-pitching machine earned it a spot
in the top 10, and the University of Chicago made it on the list twice for
gadget-themed clips. The first, the “Universal Gripper,” displays a device
researchers developed that can grip and move nearly any object regardless of
shape or size. The other video investigates how the mechanized
book-retrieval system in the university’s newly constructed library works.
Jeremy Manier, the university’s news director, attributed the library
video’s success to the fact that it could engage several Web communities:
those concerned with libraries and the future of print; architecture
enthusiasts; and techies. “It tells a good story and it’s got robots,” he
said, adding jocularly that “robots rule the Internet.”

No traditional lectures made the list. The closest
thing to a lecture is an MIT physics “module”—a 20-minute explanatory video
by Walter H.G. Lewin, a professor of physics at the institute. It explains
the physics behind a familiar dilemma: Which will make you more wet, walking
or running in the rain?

Other academic lectures have proven quite popular,
though: A Harvard University lecture series on the philosophy of justice has
accumulated more than 1.6 million views since it was uploaded in September
2009.

Although other individual lectures may not receive
a high number of hits, a growing number of colleges are posting them. Some
universities, such as UC Berkeley, Stanford, and MIT, have begun posting all
of the recorded lectures from selected courses, allowing viewers from around
the world to tune in and see what goes on in their classrooms. By
broadcasting their lectures, they “broaden the window of access” to their
resources, said Ben Hubbard, the manager of UC Berkeley’s YouTube EDU
channel. Through feedback from students and spikes in viewership during
midterms and exams, Mr. Hubbard has inferred that the channel is actually
being used as a study tool. However, he said, “We know that we haven’t had
just students logging in 120 million times. We know we’re serving the
public.”

It can be difficult to determine the factors that
lead a college video to go viral, and many college-news offices and
technology departments are still experimenting with ways to take full
advantage of their presence on YouTube. Angela Y. Lin, EDU’s manager at
YouTube, says the service provides “resources for all of our partners
regarding how to optimize their channels,” including statistics on user
views, as well as suggestions such as adding metadata, creating playlists,
and tagging keywords.

But the success of a video is ultimately determined
by the whims of The Crowd. “There is a certain mystery or alchemy about what
captures the public’s minds,” said Dan Mogulof, a UC Berkeley spokesman.
“There are common themes and variables that can increase the chance of
something becoming popular, but it’s not a simple formula.”

In just a few short years, Salman Khan has built a
free online educational institution from scratch that has nudged major
universities to offer free self-guided courses and inspired many professors
to change their teaching methods.

His creation is called
Khan Academy, and its core is a library of thousands of 10-minute
educational videos, most of them created by Mr. Khan himself. The format is
simple but feels intimate: Mr. Khan's voice narrates as viewers watch him
sketch out his thoughts on a digital whiteboard. He made the first videos
for faraway cousins who asked for tutoring help. Encouraging feedback by
others who watched the videos on YouTube led him to start the academy as a
nonprofit.

More recently Mr. Khan has begun adding what
amounts to a robot tutor to the site that can quiz visitors on their
knowledge and point them to either remedial video lessons if they fail or
more-advanced video lessons if they pass. The site issues badges and online
"challenge patches" that students can put on their Web résumés.

He guesses that the demand for his service was one
inspiration for his alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
to start MITx, its self-guided online courses that give students the option
of taking automatically graded tests to earn a certificate.

Mr. Khan also works the speaking circuit, calling
on professors to move away from a straight lecture model by assigning
prerecorded lectures as homework and using class time for more interactive
exercises, or by having students use self-paced computer systems like Khan
Academy during class while professors are available to answer questions. "It
has made universities—and I can cite examples of this—say, Why should we be
giving 300-person lectures anymore?" he said in a recent interview with
The Chronicle.

Mr. Khan, now 35, has no formal training in
education, though he does have two undergraduate degrees and a master's from
MIT, as well as an M.B.A. from Harvard. He spent most of his career as a
hedge-fund analyst. Mr. Khan also has the personal endorsement of Bill
Gates, as well as major financial support from Mr. Gates's foundation. That
outside-the-academy status makes some traditional academics cool on his
project.

"Sometimes I get a little frustrated when people
say, Oh, they're taking a Silicon Valley approach to education. I'm like,
Yes, that's exactly right. Silicon Valley is where the most creativity, the
most open-ended, the most pushing the envelope is happening," he says. "And
Silicon Valley recognizes more than any part of the world that we're having
trouble finding students capable of doing that."

In August 2004, Salman Khan agreed to help his
niece, Nadia, with her math homework. Nadia was headed into seventh grade in
New Orleans, where Khan had grown up, but she hadn't been placed in her
private school's advanced math track, which to a motivated parent these days
is a little bit like hearing your child has just been diagnosed with Lou
Gehrig's disease. In particular, Nadia was having trouble with unit
conversion, turning gallons into liters and ounces into grams.

Math was something Khan, then 28, understood. It
was one of his majors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, along
with computer science and electrical engineering. He had gone on to get a
master's in computer science and electrical engineering, also at MIT, and
then an MBA from Harvard. He was working in Boston at the time for Daniel
Wohl, who ran a hedge fund called Wohl Capital Management. Khan, an analyst,
was the only employee.

Being a bit of a geek, Khan put Yahoo!'s (YHOO)
Messenger to work to help Nadia, using the Doodle function to let him
illustrate concepts for his niece as they spoke on the phone. Then he wrote
some code that generated problems she could do on a website. With Khan's
help, Nadia made it into the fast track, and her younger brothers Arman and
Ali signed on for Khan's tutoring as well. Then they brought in some of
their friends. Khan built his site out a little more, grouping the concepts
into "modules" and creating a database that would keep track of how many
problems the kids had tried and how they had fared, so he'd know how each of
his charges was progressing.

Messenger didn't make sense with multiple viewers,
so he started creating videos that he could upload to YouTube. This required
a Wacom tablet with an electronic pen, which cost about $80. The videos were
each about 10 minutes long and contained two elements: his blackboard-style
diagrams—Khan happens to be an excellent sketcher—and his voice-over
explaining things like greatest common divisors and equivalent fractions. He
posted the first video on Nov. 16, 2006; in it, he explained the basics of
least common multiples. Soon other students, not all children, were checking
out his videos, then watching them all, then sending him notes telling him
that he had saved their math careers, too.

Less than five years later, Khan's sideline has
turned into more than just his profession. He's now a quasi-religious figure
in a country desperate for a math Moses. His free website, dubbed the Khan
Academy, may well be the most popular educational site in the world. Last
month about 2 million students visited. MIT's OpenCourseWare site, by
comparison, has been around since 2001 and averages 1 million visits each
month. He has posted more than 2,300 videos, beginning with simple addition
and going all the way to subjects such as Green's theorem, normally found in
a college calculus syllabus. He's adding videos on accounting, the credit
crisis, the French Revolution, and the SAT and GMAT, among other things. He
masters the subjects himself and then teaches them. As of the end of April,
he claims to have served up more than 54 million individual lessons.

His program has also spread from the homes of
online learners to classrooms around the world, to the point that, in at
least a few classrooms, it has supplanted textbooks. (Students often write
Khan that they aced a course without opening their texts, though Khan
doesn't post these notes on his site.) Dan Meyer, a high school math teacher
and Stanford University PhD candidate in education, puts it this way: "If
you're teaching math in this country right now, then there's pretty much no
way you haven't heard of Salman Khan."

Salman Khan is the founder and faculty of Khan
Academy http://www.khanacademy.org/ a not-for-profit educational
organization. With the stated mission “of providing a high quality education
to anyone, anywhere”, the Academy supplies a free online collection of over
2,000 videos on mathematics, history, finance, physics, chemistry,
astronomy, and economics.

In late 2004, Khan began tutoring his cousin in
mathematics using Yahoo!’s Doodle notepad. When other relatives and friends
sought his tutorial, he decided it would be more practical to distribute the
tutorials on YouTube. Their popularity there and the testimonials of
appreciative students prompted Khan to quit his job in finance in 2009 and
focus on the Academy full-time.

Khan Academy’s channel on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy
has 45+ million views so far and it’s one of YouTube’s most successful
academic partners.

In September 2010, Google announced they would be
providing the Khan Academy with $2 million to support the creation of more
courses and to enable the Khan Academy to translate their core library into
the world’s most widely spoken languages, as part of Project 10^100,
http://www.project10tothe100.com/.

That's what some professors think when they hear
Candace Thille pitch the online education experiment she directs, the Open
Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University.

They're wrong. But what her project does replace is
the traditional system of building and delivering introductory college
courses.

Professors should move away from designing
foundational courses in statistics, biology, or other core subjects on the
basis of "intuition," she argues. Instead, she wants faculty to work with
her team to put out the education equivalent of Super Bowl ads: expensively
built online course materials, cheaply available to the masses.

"We're seeing failure rates in these large
introductory courses that are not acceptable to anybody," Ms. Thille says.
"There has to be a better way to get more students—irrespective of where
they start—to be able to successfully complete."

Her approach brings together faculty subject
experts, learning researchers, and software engineers to build open online
courses grounded in the science of how people learn. The resulting systems
provide immediate feedback to students and tailor content to their skills.
As students work through online modules outside class, the software builds
profiles on them, just as Netflix does for customers. Faculty consult that
data to figure out how to spend in-person class time.

When Ms. Thille began this work, in 2002, the idea
was to design free online courses that would give independent novices a shot
at mastering what students learn in traditional classes. But two things
changed. One, her studies found that the online system benefits on-campus
students, allowing them to learn better and faster than their peers when the
digital environment is combined with some face-to-face instruction.

And two, colleges sank into "fiscal famine," as one
chancellor put it. Technological solutions like Ms. Thille's promise one
treatment for higher education's "cost disease"—the notion, articulated by
William G. Bowen and William J. Baumol, that the expense of labor-heavy
endeavors like classroom teaching inevitably rises faster than inflation.

For years, educational-technology innovations led
to more costs per student, says Mr. Bowen, president emeritus of Prince­ton
University. But today we may have reached a point at which interactive
online systems could "change that equation," he argues, by enabling students
to learn just as much with less "capital and labor."

"What you've got right now is a powerful
intersection between technological change and economics," Mr. Bowen tells
The Chronicle.

Ms. Thille is, he adds, "a real evangelist in the
best sense of the word."

Nowadays rival universities want to hire her.
Venture capitalists want to market her courses. The Obama administration
wants her advice. And so many foundations want to support her work that she
must turn away some would-be backers.

But the big question is this: Can Ms. Thille get a
critical mass of people to buy in to her idea? Can she expand the Online
Learning Initiative from a tiny darling of ed-tech evangelists to something
that truly changes education? A Background in Business

Ms. Thille brings an unusual biography to the task.
The 53-year-old Californian spent 18 years in the private sector,
culminating in a plum job as a partner in a management-consulting company in
San Francisco. She earned a master's degree but not a doctorate, a gap she's
now plugging by studying toward a Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania.

She has never taught a college course.

Ms. Thille wasn't even sure she'd make it through
her own bachelor's program, so precarious were her finances at the time. Her
family had plunged from upper middle class to struggling after her father
quit his job at the Lockheed Missiles and Space Company because of his
opposition to the Vietnam War. But with jobs and scholarships, she managed
to earn a degree in sociology from Berkeley.

After college, Ms. Thille followed her fiancé to
Pittsburgh. The engagement didn't last, but her connection to the city did.
She worked as education coordinator for a rape-crisis center, training
police and hospital employees.

She eventually wound up back in California at the
consultancy, training executives and helping businesses run meetings
effectively. There she took on her first online-learning project: building a
hybrid course to teach executives how to mentor subordinates.

Ms. Thille doesn't play up this corporate-heavy
résumé as she travels the country making the case for why professors should
change how they teach. On a recent Tuesday morning, The Chronicle tagged
along as that mission brought Ms. Thille to the University of Illinois at
Chicago, where she was meeting with folks from the university and two nearby
community colleges to prepare for the development of a new pre-calculus
course.

It's one piece of a quiet but sweeping push to
develop, deploy, and test Open Learning Initiative courses at public
institutions around the country, led by an alphabet soup of education
groups.

The failure rate in such precalculus courses can be
so bad that as many as 50 percent of students need to take the class a
second time. Ms. Thille and her colleagues hope to improve on that record
while developing materials of such quality that they're used by perhaps
100,000 students each year. Facing Skepticism

But first the collaborators must learn how to build
a course as a team. As Ms. Thille fires up her PowerPoint, she faces a dozen
or so administrators and professors in Chicago. The faculty members
segregate themselves into clusters—community-college people mostly in one
group, university folks mostly in another. Some professors are learning
about the initiative in detail for the first time. There is little visible
excitement as they plunge into the project, eating muffins at uncomfortable
desks in a classroom on the sixth floor of the Soviet-looking
science-and-engineering building.

By contrast, Ms. Thille whirls with enthusiasm. She
describes Online Learning Initiative features like software that mimics
human tutors: making comments when students go awry, keeping quiet when they
perform well, and answering questions about what to do next. She discusses
the "dashboard" that tells professors how well students grasp each learning
objective. Throughout, she gives an impression of hyper-competence, like a
pupil who sits in the front row and knows the answer to every question.

But her remarks can sometimes veer into a
disorienting brew of jargon, giving the impression that she is talking about
lab subjects rather than college kids. Once she mentions "dosing" students
with a learning activity. And early on in the workshop, she faces a feisty
challenge from Chad Taylor, an assistant professor at Harper College. He
worries about what happens when students must face free-form questions,
which the computer doesn't baby them through.

"I will self-disclose myself as a skeptic of these
programs," he says. Software is "very good at prompting the students to go
step by step, and 'do this' and 'do that,' and all these bells and whistles
with hints. But the problem is, in my classroom they're not prompted step by
step."

Around the country, there's more skepticism where
that came from, Ms. Thille confides over a dinner of tuna tacos later that
day. One chief obstacle is the "not-invented-here problem." Professors are
wary of adopting courses they did not create. The Online Learning
Initiative's team-based model represents a cultural shift for a
professoriate that derives status, and pride, from individual contributions.

Then there's privacy. The beauty of OLI is that
developers can improve classes by studying data from thousands of students.
But some academics worry that colleges could use that same data to evaluate
professors—and fire those whose students fail to measure up.

Ms. Thille tells a personal story that illustrates
who could benefit if she prevails. Years ago she adopted a teenager, Cece.
The daughter of a drug user who died of AIDS, Cece was 28 days' truant from
high school when she went to live with Ms. Thille. She was so undereducated,
even the simple fractions of measuring cups eluded her. Her math teacher
told Ms. Thille that with 40 kids in class, she needed to focus on the ones
who were going to "make it."

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
In a way we already have something like this operating in colleges and
universities that adopt the Brigham Young University variable speed video disks
designed for learning the two basic accounting courses without meeting in
classrooms or having the usual online instruction. Applications vary of course,
and some colleges may have recitation sections where students meet to get help
and take examinations ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo

Although BYU uses this no-class video pedagogy, it must be recognized that
most of the BYU students learning accounting on their own in this manner are
both exceptionally motivated and exceptionally intelligent. For schools that
adopt the pedagogies of Me. Thile or BYU, the students must be like BYU
accounting students or the pedagogy must be modified for more hand holding and
kick-butt features that could be done in various ways online or onsite.

Perhaps Ms. Thille is being somewhat naive about turf wars in universities.
Certain disciplines are able to afford a core faculty for research and
advanced-course teaching with miniscule classes because teaching large base
courses in the general education core justifies not having to shrink those
departments with almost no majors.

Where Ms. Thille's pedagogy might be more
useful is in specialty courses where its expensive to hire faculty to teach one
or two courses. For example, it's almost always difficult for accounting
departments to hire top faculty for governmental accounting courses and the
super-technical ERP courses in AIS.

Over the last few years, my wife and I have become
big fans of the video classes produced by The Teaching Company. Two or three
times per week, we will watch a 30 or 45-minute video lecture on art or
literature or history or religion prepared by a college teacher. I am amazed
by how much I now know about topics that once were totally foreign to me.

In watching these videos, I am occasionally
reminded of a question that comes up in colleges now and then: Do we need
live instructors? Why don’t we find the very best college teachers and film
their classes? Then, put those videos up on the Internet and everyone (or,
at least, our students) can learn the material without the need of a
classroom or a teacher.

Well, the easy answer to that query is that a
college education has to be more than the conveyance of information to a
passive student taking notes. So, doesn’t that automatically raise the next
question that we need to address as teachers: What are we adding in our
classes that goes beyond the conveyance of information to a passive student?
If the answer is nothing, then maybe we should all be replaced by videos.

As you get ready for the fall semester, ponder how
you are going to add value to your students. --“I’m going to tell them some
interesting stories.” -- A video can tell them hundreds of interesting
stories. --“I’m going to tell them about the history of my discipline.” -- A
video can tell them about the history of your discipline. --“I’m going to
walk them step-by-step through the essential core of the disciple.” - A
video can walk students through the essential core of the discipline.

Those are all important to a class but they could
just as easily be done by a person on video. What are you going to do this
coming semester in your classes that a video could not do?

We live in a time when too many people believed
that they could not be replaced until they were replaced. My assumption is
that if you add real value to a process, you become essential. Otherwise,
someone will eventually catch on that you can be replaced.

There are many, many ways that teachers add value
to the students in their classes. How will you do that in the coming fall?
What will you do that couldn’t be replaced by a video?

Jensen Comment
Believe it or not, I think the most important thing we can add is to be live
role models day-to-day for our students. We can be role models regarding what it
means to be professionally competent (without necessarily awing them in every
class). We can be role models for such other things in life as empathy, caring,
ethics, human frailty, and yes even fashion.

Fashion?
Professors who show up in class wearing T-shirts, jeans, and open toe sandals
really turn me off. Perhaps that's because I'm an old farm boy who, at one time,
was awed by male professionals who wore white shirts and neckties to work. Our
most scruffy professors will spiff up when applying for a job or make a speech
at a local Rotary Club luncheon. What makes our students less important
day-to-day?

But the most important thing we add is to awe our students with both our
professional competence combined with professional honesty in admitting things
we cannot answer. Watching a talking head on television can be really
educational, but having a live teacher fumble about out loud while trying to
reason out a brilliant answer can be even more educational (even if it is more
time consuming). Teachers demonstrate how real-world thinking takes us down
blind alleys and stumbling blocks of dumb ideas. Students leave our courses with
a better understanding of what a non-perfect world of reasoning is really like
(as long as our stumbling really gets eventually us to the best answers).

The latest exchange of AECM messaging regarding the question raised by Tom
Selling about sales discounts provides a perfect example of great teachers
stumbling about trying to find the best answer. If Carla had been the first to
respond it would've been disappointing to the AECM learning process.

What is sad in teaching, as illustrated by many lurkers on the AECM, is
the hesitancy of some teachers to be fearful of subjecting their incomplete or
flawed reasoning to students and peers. The classic case is the teacher who
delivers only canned lectures and cases in which he or she only delivers perfect
reasoning that are much like prepared answers being read from a teleprompter.
This can make students fearful that they can never be as smart as their teachers
who always seem to know the best answers.

I love teachers who have the confidence to even provide answers they know are
wrong and then testing how students discover the errors and are willing to point
them out. This, by the way, is part of the BAM pedagogy ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm
Probably the best teaching lies in asking the best questions without telling or
even knowing the best answers.

YouTube advertisers increase 40% in year--- Top brands eager to reach millennial
consumers have boosted the number of advertisers on Google Inc.’s
video site by 40% in the past year, the Financial Times reports. YouTube
also said advertisers from the top 100 brands based on a ranking by
Interbrand were spending 60% more than last year.

Jensen Comment
This reveals the changing times in free communication, marketing, entertainment,
education, and training --- yes free education and training. YouTube is playing
a huge role in education and training as major universities and training
companies now have YouTube channels for a vast amount of training and education
videos.

But featured channels are almost a miniscule part of what you can learn on
YouTube. For example, you can learn how to operate or trouble shoot almost any
device in the market by searching YouTube in a clever way. You can learn how to
do virtually anything in Excel via YouTube. You can learn how to analyze
financial statements and prepare tax returns on YouTube. In fact there is very
little that you cannot learn from YouTube.

My problem with YouTube learning is that it is less efficient than first
trying other sources, especially Wikipedia. You can efficiently scan millions of
Wikipedia modules with word searches and in many instances their table of
contents. For example, compare searches of the "Capital Asset Pricing Model" in
Wikipedia versus YouTube. Learning about the CAPM from YouTube takes much more
time than learning about this model from Wikipedia.

As a college president, I ask students and
graduates what are we doing correctly and what can we improve upon. The
typical responses to how we can improve are not surprising — more parking
and more financial aid (often in that order). Lately the most common answer
from recent graduates as to how we can improve has been surprising — more
education about financial literacy and the practical aspects of living in
today’s world.

I hear the following comments with increasing
frequency, particularly since the Great Recession of 2008:

had no idea of the impact of my student debt
and credit card debt on my ability to live a comfortable life after
college.

Living in the residence halls and dining at
the college, I didn’t need to know about budgeting and renting an
apartment. I had no idea how to create a budget so I could live
responsibly and comfortably on my salary.

In college I learned how to cultivate a
pointed argument, but quickly learned that in the workplace an
aggressive argument can get you fired. No one told me about how to
disagree with your boss and not have your job threatened.

Faculty and administrators at liberal arts colleges
do not shy at complex thinking. We tend to scrutinize the details even as we
comprehend the big picture. We look for connections among areas of thought,
and revel in a multitude of perspectives. By the end of their four years on
campus, our students have benefited from a well-rounded, richly layered
education. I believe most even recognize what it means to be liberally
educated. Having learned to "turn the crystal" as they develop their views
and goals, they are confident and able to find success on many levels.

Why then do so many recent graduates seem unable to
demonstrate sound decision-making in an area as fundamental as finances and
entering the work world?

Is it possible that in our efforts to foster
creative and critical problem solving, we neglect the basics of responsible
day-to-day living and working? As we carefully engage students in discerning
shades of gray, is it at the expense of black and white?

Two events have led me to ask these questions.
First is the number of conversations like those described above, with
graduates who confided to me their frustrating lack of “real-world”
financial knowledge. The second is the fact of the high loan default rate
among recent college graduates, which is 7 percent nationwide (Augustana’s
rate is 4.2 percent). I know I am not alone in asking the question: What
should we do?

Personal Prosperity and the Common Good

Jon Meacham, the former editor of Newsweek,
addressed the 2011 Council of Independent College Presidents Institute.
Meacham praised the role of liberal education, noting that "people who know
about Shakespeare tend to create the Internet." But if appreciating
Shakespeare and other skills common to a liberal education is viewed by most
as "quaint and quirky," liberal education will not survive. Instead, he
argues that liberal education must be "vital and relevant" by "training
young minds to solve problems and to see what others have yet to see and to
think energetically about creating jobs and wealth," which Meacham calls the
"oxygen of democracy."

I'd go one step further than Meacham. Our graduates
can’t create wealth and jobs if they don’t have the ability to balance a
checkbook, or the skills to hold a job.

When asked to define "personal success," I think it
is fair to suggest that most college freshmen would put "financial success"
toward the top of their list. As they begin taking liberal arts courses,
they connect their learning to other aspects of their lives, and many begin
to think of a career as something more than just a paycheck. They develop
meaningful working relationships with faculty members and other students,
and may experience some peaks in their education — whether through an
internship, international study, research with faculty or other achievements
in their major studies. Their definition of success develops more facets.

At Augustana College, we have long promoted
high-impact learning experiences as well as the close relationships that
allow integrated and collaborative learning to flourish. Recently we have
begun to take new steps toward teaching certain life skills fundamental to
ensuring success of all kinds.

Leadership about financial literacy must come from
the top. I remind our students that if they live like college graduates with
good jobs while they are students, their debt levels will cause them to live
like students when they graduate. Going out to a mid-priced restaurant twice
a week for four years could easily cost $8,000. Putting those charges on a
credit card and carrying the balance over four years tips the cost to well
over $10,000.

Five years ago, before the severe economic
downturn, we introduced a class on personal finance. Offered each spring and
fall term, the class is packed with seniors and some juniors. Having read
Plato and Neruda, spent hours upon hours working in our human cadaver or
volcano lab, or climbed Machu Picchu, these students suspect they must
improve their financial literacy before they graduate.

Their instructor, an alumnus retired banker, begins
by teaching how to use financial templates. The students create a personal
profile and then produce a cash flow statement for the previous year. After
clarifying their own understanding of their financial history, which
generally is filled with gaps until this class, they work with their
instructor on the process of creating a budget for the next year. Taking
into account three to four personal financial goals (e.g., paying for
students loans, emergency funds, etc., and even retirement), the students
lay their financial path for the future. At all times throughout the class
they keep in mind their current net worth, and how that value should affect
their financial decisions. The course is such a success that, given the
financial illiteracy demonstrated by too many young alumni, we now are
offering a free three-hour seminar as a "crash course" in personal finance
for our graduating seniors.

Sharing Responsibility

Augustana is not the only liberal arts college to
offer such a class, and there is more we all can do. Many liberal arts
colleges are adding majors that address personal financial viability in a
changing world and also attract prospective students in an increasingly
competitive market.

Augustana’s newest majors — which extend from
traditional majors — include graphic design, neuroscience, environmental
studies, multimedia journalism and engineering physics, among others. While
some of our faculty state concerns that our college’s liberal arts
foundation might be shaken by the contemporary and perhaps more fiscal focus
of these programs,
most see the new majors as logical progressionsof
traditional fields and therefore deeply related to our college’s mission.

Every night at
bedtime, former Celtic Ray Williams locks the doors of his home: a
broken-down 1992 Buick, rusting on a back street where he ran out of
everything.

The 10-year NBA
veteran formerly known as “Sugar Ray’’ leans back in the driver’s seat,
drapes his legs over the center console, and rests his head on a pillow of
tattered towels. He tunes his boom box to gospel music, closes his eyes, and
wonders.

Williams, a
generation removed from staying in first-class hotels with Larry Bird and
Co. in their drive to the 1985 NBA Finals, mostly wonders how much more he
can bear. He is not new to poverty, illness, homelessness. Or quiet
desperation.

In recent weeks, he
has lived on bread and water.

“They say God won’t
give you more than you can handle,’’ Williams said in his roadside sedan.
“But this is wearing me out.’’

A former top-10 NBA
draft pick who once scored 52 points in a game, Williams is a face of
big-time basketball’s underclass. As the NBA employs players whose average
annual salaries top $5 million, Williams is among scores of retired players
for whom the good life vanished not long after the final whistle.

Dozens of NBA
retirees, including Williams and his brother, Gus, a two-time All-Star, have
sought bankruptcy protection.

“Ray is like many
players who invested so much of their lives in basketball,’’ said Mike
Glenn, who played 10 years in the NBA, including three with Williams and the
New York Knicks. “When the dividends stopped coming, the problems started
escalating. It’s a cold reality.’’

Williams, 55 and
diabetic, wants the titans of today’s NBA to help take care of him and other
retirees who have plenty of time to watch games but no televisions to do so.
He needs food, shelter, cash for car repairs, and a job, and he believes the
multibillion-dollar league and its players should treat him as if he were a
teammate in distress.

One thing Williams
especially wants them to know: Unlike many troubled ex-players, he has never
fallen prey to drugs, alcohol, or gambling.

“When I played the
game, they always talked about loyalty to the team,’’ Williams said. “Well,
where’s the loyalty and compassion for ex-players who are hurting? We opened
the door for these guys whose salaries are through the roof.’’

Unfortunately for
Williams, the NBA-related organizations best suited to help him have closed
their checkbooks to him. The NBA Legends Foundation, which awarded him
grants totaling more than $10,000 in 1996 and 2004, denied his recent
request for help. So did the NBA Retired Players Association, which in the
past year gave him two grants totaling $2,000.

Amazon launched a new service that helps educators
and authors publish their own digital "textbooks" and other educational
content that students can then access on Fire tablets, iPad, iPhone, Android
smartphones and tablets, Mac, and PC.

"Educators and authors can use the public beta of
Amazon's new Kindle Textbook Creator tool to easily turn PDFs of their
textbooks and course materials into Kindle books," the company explained in
its announcement. "Once the book is ready, authors can upload it to KDP in
just a few simple steps to reach students worldwide."

Features include flashcards, highlighting, and
note-taking.

Those who publish through the KDP (Kindle Direct
Publishing) program can earn royalties of up to 70% and keep their rights
and maintain control of their content. "They can also choose to enroll their
books in KDP Select for additional royalty opportunities like Kindle
Unlimited and the Kindle Owners' Lending Library, and access to marketing
tools like Kindle Countdown Deals and Free Book Promotions," Amazon said.

More information about the KDP program is available
on theAmazon website.

Jensen Comment
It's relatively easy in my field to write chapter material relative to the
end-of-chapter material on questions, problems, and cases to be accompanied by a
separate answer book. Also in accounting and tax there's a constant stream of
rules changes such that updating textbooks becomes a pain in the butt for an
individual author. For popular accounting and tax textbooks such updating has
become a factory operation by the big publishing firms along with production of
all the supplementary videos, test banks, teaching notes, etc.

My point is that its harder to be a textbook author in some disciplines
vis-a-vis others where the content needs changing annually or more often.
Textbook authors often find their textbooks own them rather than vice versa.

Kindle Textbook Creater makes it relatively easy to change course handouts
into a textbook. But consideration needs to be given to all those copyrighted
notes now in your password-controlled Moodle or Blackboard servers that cannot
be made available by to the general public.

Also consideration needs to be given to ethics and your employer's policies
regarding sales of materials to your own students.

Interactive (online or offline) Homework and Other Student-Friendly
Features of Google Apps

Google Docs has added an equation editor so students
can actually complete math problems within a document, allowing students to not
only write papers that include numbers and equations but also take notes from
quantitative classes using Google Docs. Google has also added the ability to
insert superscripts and subscripts, which can be useful for writing out chemical
compounds or algebraic expressions.
"Google Docs Become More Student-Friendly," by Lena Rao, TechCrunch.com via The
Washington Post, September 28, 2009 ---
Click Here
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/28/AR2009092802665.html?wpisrc=newsletter

Google has been aggressively marketing Google Apps
to schools, recently launching a
centralized site designed to recruit universities and colleges. Now, Google
is
tweakingGoogle Docs, which is a part of Google
Apps' productivity suite, by adding a few student-friendly features.

Google Docs has added an equation editor so
students can actually complete math problems within a document, allowing
students to not only write papers that include numbers and equations but
also take notes from quantitative classes using Google Docs. Google has also
added the ability to insert superscripts and subscripts, which can be useful
for writing out chemical compounds or algebraic expressions.

Google is also trying to
make Docs appealing to those humanities majors out there by letting users to
select from various bulleting styles for creating outlines and giving
students ability to print footnotes as endnotes for term papers. And a few
weeks ago, Google
launcheda translation feature in Google Docs.

As we've written in the
past, Google is wise to recruit educational institutions because that's
where many people get trained, start relying on, and form brand allegiances
to productivity apps. Drawing from Apple's strategy, Google knows that brand
loyalty is definitely forged at these schools and is steadily developing its
products to become more appealing to students. Rival Microsoft is also
launchingweb-based versions of its Office
products aimed at the student audience. And startup
Zohooffers a free web-based productivity suite.

Google Takeout was
unveiledin summer 2011. It allows Google users to
export all their Google data to disk or just data from individual services.
It's all thanks to the
Data Liberation Frontteam, which builds tools to
give Google users control over their data.

I just finished the first week of a 12-week MSA
online tax course at UConn. I put students in groups and I ask them to work
fairly lengthy quizzes (homework) independently, putting their answers in an
Excel spreadsheet, and then they meet in chats to discuss their differences.
When they can’t resolve a question, they invite me into chat. This week a
student introduced me to Google docs, and I was swept off my feet by the way
this tool could be used in my class. I love it! I created a video on the fly
on Thursday to illustrate how to create a spreadsheet and share it with
other group members. I may be the last to the party on this tool, but in
case some of you aren’t aware of it, I am posting the video.

I use Google Docs and Spreadsheets with all of my courses. It's free,
includes most of the Microsoft Office features, and makes it easy for
students to collaborate on team projects. It also makes it easy to submit
the final document in various formats (e.g., .pdf format).

My students use two communication tools in conjunction with Google Docs and
Spreadsheets (i.e., TokBox and Skype). To use these tools, they need a
headset/microphone and webcam.

TokBox (http://www.tokbox.com)
is a free, hosted video messaging service. You can record up to a 10 minute
video clip that can be shared by URL link. TokBox also includes a video
chat feature that enables multiple people to video conference. This feature
works great with study teams.

Skype (http://www.skype.com)
includes chat, audio and video-conferencing. The chat feature works
probably better than what you have been using. With a headset/microphone,
you can have up to 10+ people in a audio conference call.
Video-conferencing is 1:1 and includes a great screen sharing feature.

You can really change the nature of team collaboration when you combine
Google Docs and Spreadsheets with TokBox and/or Skype. Following is an
example of how to do this.

EXAMPLE

Students use Google Docs to create a shared workspace for writing a paper.
One student sets up the workspace and invites team members into the space
through an email link. Each team member is given editor rights.

Using a headset/microphone and webcam, students use TokBox to host a group
video conference call. This enables students to brainstorm and get a
project running.

During the work process, each team member adds/changes the paper in the
common workspace in Google Docs.

When it is time to pull the paper together and do final editing, students
use the audio conference call feature to talk with each other. While all
are online in Skype, each team member logs into the Google Docs paper and
views it on his/her computer screen. One or more students act as the
editor. All see changes as they are made.

When editing is finished, one student exports the final assignment document
in .pdf format to his/her hard drive. The student then submits the document
for grading (e.g., student uploads the paper through the Digital Drop Box in
Blackboard).

OUTCOME

By combining the features of Google Docs and Spreadsheets with communication
tools like TokBox and Skype, students learn how to use technology to get
things done. Major companies pay a fortune to do what your students can do
for free. Purchasing a headset/microphone and webcam is relatively
inexpensive. The experience students get is priceless.

I use this approach and technology tools with face-2-face, blended, and
online classes. It works great. The approach changes the nature of how
students and instructor interact in the teaching-learning experience.

“I never thought I could work so hard. I never thought I could learn so
much. I never thought I could think so deeply. And, it was actually fun.”
(Joe Hoyle)

January 25, 2012 update from Amy Dunbar

Hi Bob,

I’m now using Google Docs with my undergrad students, too. (I’m back in the
classroom after 12 years online.) No one needs instructions on how to use
the tool anymore. I particularly like the chat function in the
spreadsheet. Students generally use the Google chat feature instead of AIM.
To make sure I have access to the spreadsheets, I set them up for each group
and send the groups the link. Google is truly making learning collaborative.
At the end of the semester, I delete them all and start over with the next
class.

And a follow-up to Rick Lillie’s suggestion to read

Clark, R.
C., and R. E. Mayer. 2011. E-Learning and the Science of Instruction:
Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning
Third ed. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.

After reading that book, I revised all my content modules in an effort to
reduce cognitive overload. Now I use dropdown windows to provide examples,
problems, comments. My Dunbar comments are coded a different color, so they
can ignore them. ;-) When I mapped my quizzes back to the content modules,
I discovered that a lot of my material was not on point for the quizzes, and
thus wasn’t essential to what I thought they should know cold when the
course was over. That extra material is now in a drop-down window titled
“more,” which students can read if they want to know more. The content on
each page is now fairly straightforward (she says hopefully). Thank you,
Rick, for suggesting that book. It changed the way I create my content
modules.

Last semester I taught my favorite book, Mark Z.
Danielewski’s Houseof Leaves. With
nightly reading assignments that take three to four hours, I expect students
to fall behind. So I wasn’t surprised when, a few days in, I asked if
everyone had done all the reading and the majority of the class avoided
looking at me. Such are the occupational hazards of teaching.

We’re only a few weeks into the semester, but
experience shows that it’s never too early for students to get behind in
their reading—even if you’re not teaching amazing post-print
fiction. While students clearly have the right to choose what they will and
will not read, when a significant portion of the class falls behind it can
make it very difficult to lead a class discussion.

Last semester, I heard a strategy from my friend
and colleague Alyssa Stalsberg-Canelli for dealing with exactly this
problem: have the students write down the page number they’ve reached in
their reading on a scrap of paper and pass it up to the front. Students can
then tell you, more or less anonymously, how far they’ve come in their
reading. Taking the class’s temperature in this manner allows you to adjust
your strategy for leading the class and saves you from asking questions that
no one will be able to answer, resulting in the not-so-golden silence.

For just one more turn of the screw, I decided to
forego the pieces of paper and instead used Google Docs. (You want
posts about Google Docs? We got ‘em!) First, I created a
spreadsheet. As I’ve said before,
I use spreadsheets for everything! Then I clicked
the “Share” button in the upper right corner.

Early History of Mathematics and Calculating in ChinaThe best general source for ancient Chinese mathematics
is Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 3. In this
volume you will learn, for example, that the Chinese proved the Pythagorean
Theorem at the very latest by the Later Han dynasty (25-221 CE). The proof comes
from an ancient text called The Arithmetical Classic of the Gnomon and the
Circular Paths of Heaven. The book has been translated by Christopher Cullen in
his Astronomy and Mathematics in Ancient China: The Zhou Bi Suan Jing. Needham
also discusses the abacus, or suanpan ("calculating plate").
Steve Field, Professor of Chinese, Trinity University, September 24, 2008
Jensen Comment
Later Han Dynasty ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Later_Han_Dynasty_(Five_Dynasties)
Pythagorean Theorem Theorem ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_Theorem
Pythagorean Theorem (Gougu Theorem in China) History ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_Theorem#History
Suanpan ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suanpan

Questions
What was an ancient Greek ploy to combat inflation?
How do you account for interest paid in cabbages during hyperinflation?

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."Lewis Carroll, The Walrus
and the Carpenter ---
http://www.jabberwocky.com/carroll/walrus.html

1300s A.D. crusades opened the
Middle East and Mediterranean trade routes

Venice and Genoa became venture
trading centers for commerce

1296 A.D. Fini Ledgers in Florence

1340 A.D. City of Massri
Treasurers Accounts are in Double Entry form.

1458 A.D.Benedikt Kotruljevic (Croatian) (Dubrovnik,1416-L’Aquila,1469)
(His Italian name was Benedetto Cotrugli Raguseo), wrote The Book on the
Art of Trading which is now acknowledged to be the first person to write
a book describing double-entry techniques (although the origins of double
entry bookkeeping in practice are unknown)

1494 Luca Pacioli's Summa de
Arithmetica Geometria Proportionalita (A Review of Arithmetic, Geometry and
Proportions) which is the best known early book on double entry
bookkeeping in algebraic form.

Recall that double entry bookkeeping supposedly evolved
in Italy long before it was put into algebraic form in the book Summa by
Luca
Pacioli and into an earlier book by Benedikt Kotruljevic.

Jolyon Jenkins investigates how accountants shaped
the modern world. They sit in boardrooms, audit schools, make government
policy and pull the plug on failing companies. And most of us have our
performance measured. The history of accounting and book-keeping is largely
the history of civilisation.

Jolyon asks how this came about and traces the
religious roots of some accounting practices.

Eventually, educators might be able to get copies of these audio files.

October 3, 2009 message from Rick Dull

Benedikt Kotruljevic
(Croatian) (Dubrovnik,1416-L’Aquila,1469) (His Italian name was Benedetto
Cotrugli Raguseo), who in 1458, wrote "The Book on the Art of Trading" which
is now acknowledged to be the first person to write a book describing
double-entry techniques? See the American Mathematical Society’s web-site:
http://www.ams.org/featurecolumn/archive/book1.html .

Rick Dull

And so on --- I think you get the idea.

One truly valuable research for an accounting history mapping
project is the free Accounting Historians Journal archive (although not all of
the publications are free online but should be free to students using the hard
copy stacks in campus libraries) ---
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/general_library/dac/files/ahj.html

An Absolute Must Read for Educators
One of the most exciting things I took away from the 2010 AAA Annual Meetings in
San Francisco is a hard copy handout entitled "Expanding Your Classroom with
Video Technology and Social Media," by Mark Holtzblatt and Norbert Tschakert.
Mark later sent me a copy of this handout and permission to serve it up to you
at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/Video-Expanding_Your_Classroom_CTLA_2010.pdf

This is an exciting listing to over 100 video clips and full-feature videos
that might be excellent resources for your courses, for your research, and for
your scholarship in general. Included are videos on resources and useful tips
for video projects as well as free online communication tools.

My thanks to Professors Holtzblatt and Tschakert for this tremendous body of
work that they are now sharing with us.

That's what some professors think when they hear
Candace Thille pitch the online education experiment she directs, the Open
Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University.

They're wrong. But what her project does replace is
the traditional system of building and delivering introductory college
courses.

Professors should move away from designing
foundational courses in statistics, biology, or other core subjects on the
basis of "intuition," she argues. Instead, she wants faculty to work with
her team to put out the education equivalent of Super Bowl ads: expensively
built online course materials, cheaply available to the masses.

"We're seeing failure rates in these large
introductory courses that are not acceptable to anybody," Ms. Thille says.
"There has to be a better way to get more students—irrespective of where
they start—to be able to successfully complete."

Her approach brings together faculty subject
experts, learning researchers, and software engineers to build open online
courses grounded in the science of how people learn. The resulting systems
provide immediate feedback to students and tailor content to their skills.
As students work through online modules outside class, the software builds
profiles on them, just as Netflix does for customers. Faculty consult that
data to figure out how to spend in-person class time.

When Ms. Thille began this work, in 2002, the idea
was to design free online courses that would give independent novices a shot
at mastering what students learn in traditional classes. But two things
changed. One, her studies found that the online system benefits on-campus
students, allowing them to learn better and faster than their peers when the
digital environment is combined with some face-to-face instruction.

And two, colleges sank into "fiscal famine," as one
chancellor put it. Technological solutions like Ms. Thille's promise one
treatment for higher education's "cost disease"—the notion, articulated by
William G. Bowen and William J. Baumol, that the expense of labor-heavy
endeavors like classroom teaching inevitably rises faster than inflation.

For years, educational-technology innovations led
to more costs per student, says Mr. Bowen, president emeritus of Prince­ton
University. But today we may have reached a point at which interactive
online systems could "change that equation," he argues, by enabling students
to learn just as much with less "capital and labor."

"What you've got right now is a powerful
intersection between technological change and economics," Mr. Bowen tells
The Chronicle.

Ms. Thille is, he adds, "a real evangelist in the
best sense of the word."

Nowadays rival universities want to hire her.
Venture capitalists want to market her courses. The Obama administration
wants her advice. And so many foundations want to support her work that she
must turn away some would-be backers.

But the big question is this: Can Ms. Thille get a
critical mass of people to buy in to her idea? Can she expand the Online
Learning Initiative from a tiny darling of ed-tech evangelists to something
that truly changes education? A Background in Business

Ms. Thille brings an unusual biography to the task.
The 53-year-old Californian spent 18 years in the private sector,
culminating in a plum job as a partner in a management-consulting company in
San Francisco. She earned a master's degree but not a doctorate, a gap she's
now plugging by studying toward a Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania.

She has never taught a college course.

Ms. Thille wasn't even sure she'd make it through
her own bachelor's program, so precarious were her finances at the time. Her
family had plunged from upper middle class to struggling after her father
quit his job at the Lockheed Missiles and Space Company because of his
opposition to the Vietnam War. But with jobs and scholarships, she managed
to earn a degree in sociology from Berkeley.

After college, Ms. Thille followed her fiancé to
Pittsburgh. The engagement didn't last, but her connection to the city did.
She worked as education coordinator for a rape-crisis center, training
police and hospital employees.

She eventually wound up back in California at the
consultancy, training executives and helping businesses run meetings
effectively. There she took on her first online-learning project: building a
hybrid course to teach executives how to mentor subordinates.

Ms. Thille doesn't play up this corporate-heavy
résumé as she travels the country making the case for why professors should
change how they teach. On a recent Tuesday morning, The Chronicle tagged
along as that mission brought Ms. Thille to the University of Illinois at
Chicago, where she was meeting with folks from the university and two nearby
community colleges to prepare for the development of a new pre-calculus
course.

It's one piece of a quiet but sweeping push to
develop, deploy, and test Open Learning Initiative courses at public
institutions around the country, led by an alphabet soup of education
groups.

The failure rate in such precalculus courses can be
so bad that as many as 50 percent of students need to take the class a
second time. Ms. Thille and her colleagues hope to improve on that record
while developing materials of such quality that they're used by perhaps
100,000 students each year. Facing Skepticism

But first the collaborators must learn how to build
a course as a team. As Ms. Thille fires up her PowerPoint, she faces a dozen
or so administrators and professors in Chicago. The faculty members
segregate themselves into clusters—community-college people mostly in one
group, university folks mostly in another. Some professors are learning
about the initiative in detail for the first time. There is little visible
excitement as they plunge into the project, eating muffins at uncomfortable
desks in a classroom on the sixth floor of the Soviet-looking
science-and-engineering building.

By contrast, Ms. Thille whirls with enthusiasm. She
describes Online Learning Initiative features like software that mimics
human tutors: making comments when students go awry, keeping quiet when they
perform well, and answering questions about what to do next. She discusses
the "dashboard" that tells professors how well students grasp each learning
objective. Throughout, she gives an impression of hyper-competence, like a
pupil who sits in the front row and knows the answer to every question.

But her remarks can sometimes veer into a
disorienting brew of jargon, giving the impression that she is talking about
lab subjects rather than college kids. Once she mentions "dosing" students
with a learning activity. And early on in the workshop, she faces a feisty
challenge from Chad Taylor, an assistant professor at Harper College. He
worries about what happens when students must face free-form questions,
which the computer doesn't baby them through.

"I will self-disclose myself as a skeptic of these
programs," he says. Software is "very good at prompting the students to go
step by step, and 'do this' and 'do that,' and all these bells and whistles
with hints. But the problem is, in my classroom they're not prompted step by
step."

Around the country, there's more skepticism where
that came from, Ms. Thille confides over a dinner of tuna tacos later that
day. One chief obstacle is the "not-invented-here problem." Professors are
wary of adopting courses they did not create. The Online Learning
Initiative's team-based model represents a cultural shift for a
professoriate that derives status, and pride, from individual contributions.

Then there's privacy. The beauty of OLI is that
developers can improve classes by studying data from thousands of students.
But some academics worry that colleges could use that same data to evaluate
professors—and fire those whose students fail to measure up.

Ms. Thille tells a personal story that illustrates
who could benefit if she prevails. Years ago she adopted a teenager, Cece.
The daughter of a drug user who died of AIDS, Cece was 28 days' truant from
high school when she went to live with Ms. Thille. She was so undereducated,
even the simple fractions of measuring cups eluded her. Her math teacher
told Ms. Thille that with 40 kids in class, she needed to focus on the ones
who were going to "make it."

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
In a way we already have something like this operating in colleges and
universities that adopt the Brigham Young University variable speed video disks
designed for learning the two basic accounting courses without meeting in
classrooms or having the usual online instruction. Applications vary of course,
and some colleges may have recitation sections where students meet to get help
and take examinations ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo

Although BYU uses this no-class video pedagogy, it must be recognized that
most of the BYU students learning accounting on their own in this manner are
both exceptionally motivated and exceptionally intelligent. For schools that
adopt the pedagogies of Me. Thile or BYU, the students must be like BYU
accounting students or the pedagogy must be modified for more hand holding and
kick-butt features that could be done in various ways online or onsite.

Perhaps Ms. Thille is being somewhat naive about turf wars in universities.
Certain disciplines are able to afford a core faculty for research and
advanced-course teaching with miniscule classes because teaching large base
courses in the general education core justifies not having to shrink those
departments with almost no majors.

Where Ms. Thille's pedagogy might be more
useful is in specialty courses where its expensive to hire faculty to teach one
or two courses. For example, it's almost always difficult for accounting
departments to hire top faculty for governmental accounting courses and the
super-technical ERP courses in AIS.

Apple’s recent release of free software to build
e-textbooks has brought attention to custom publishing of academic
materials. But Apple’s software, called iBooks Author, lacks easy tools for
multiple authors to collaborate on a joint textbook project. Since most
books aren’t written in isolation, two new publishing platforms seek to make
that group collaboration easier.

The first,Booktype,
is free and open-source. Once the platform is
installed on a Web server, teams of authors can work together in their
browsers to write sections of books and chat with each other in real time
about revisions. Entire chapters can be imported and moved around by
dragging and dropping. The finished product can be published in minutes on
e-readers and tablets, or exported for on-demand printing. Booktype also
comes with community features that let authors create profiles, join groups,
and track books through editing.

Inkling
Habitat,the other new offering, appears to have
even greater ambitions. Where iBooks Author is designed mostly for would-be
amateur publishers, Inkling Habitat creates a cloud-based platform for the
professional market. Matthew MacInnis, Inkling’s chief executive, said the
company’s tool is designed to give the global teams who work on
professionally published textbooks a single outlet to publish interactive
material for the iPad and the Web. Mr. MacInnis said hundreds of users can
access the same textbook content at once, and the software will keep track
of each step in the editing process.

Inkling Habitat also automates some of the editing
process that is unique to e-textbooks, like checking for broken links
between special terms and their definitions in a glossary. Those automatic
functions, Mr. MacInnis said, will allow e-textbook publishing to get easier
without requiring additional staff. “You can’t build the industry up around
digital content if you’re going to throw people at every problem,” he said.

Stanford's d.school space is the stage for creative
collaboration. A new book by two of its leaders provides direction for
design spaces elsewhere.

The spaces within Stanford's popular d.school are
as creative as the furniture and fixtures are inventive, and every aspect of
the space impacts behavior.

In his foreword for Make Space, David Kelley, the
founder of the design school as well as the design firm IDEO, writes,
"Regardless of whether it's a classroom or the offices of a billion-dollar
company, space is something to think of as an instrument for innovation and
collaboration. Space is a valuable tool that can help you create deep and
meaningful collaborations in your work and life."

As a spectator on the second floor of Stanford's
d.school building, on any given day you might observe a team of students
standing at a project table in an active stance – literally learning on
their feet. Or you might see a group engaged in a sharing exercise sitting
on foam cubes in a circle as if around a campfire. From the overlook you
might also be able to peer down at the atrium and see an assembly of
executives paired up at cocktail tables doing some cutting and pasting – as
in scissors and glue, not keystrokes.

Need an office? Slide a few suspended dry-erase
panels together and roll in a table and chair. Swap out the table and chair
for a couple of couches on coasters and you've got yourself an informal
lounge. Need a respite from an open, collaborative environment? Step into
the "Booth Noir," a simply furnished low-tech hiding place tucked in a
corner. In each case the environment supports a different kind of learning
or exchange of information.

Google Takeout was
unveiledin summer 2011. It allows Google users to
export all their Google data to disk or just data from individual services.
It's all thanks to the
Data Liberation Frontteam, which builds tools to
give Google users control over their data.

I just finished the first week of a 12-week MSA
online tax course at UConn. I put students in groups and I ask them to work
fairly lengthy quizzes (homework) independently, putting their answers in an
Excel spreadsheet, and then they meet in chats to discuss their differences.
When they can’t resolve a question, they invite me into chat. This week a
student introduced me to Google docs, and I was swept off my feet by the way
this tool could be used in my class. I love it! I created a video on the fly
on Thursday to illustrate how to create a spreadsheet and share it with
other group members. I may be the last to the party on this tool, but in
case some of you aren’t aware of it, I am posting the video.

I use Google Docs and Spreadsheets with all of my courses. It's free,
includes most of the Microsoft Office features, and makes it easy for
students to collaborate on team projects. It also makes it easy to submit
the final document in various formats (e.g., .pdf format).

My students use two communication tools in conjunction with Google Docs and
Spreadsheets (i.e., TokBox and Skype). To use these tools, they need a
headset/microphone and webcam.

TokBox (http://www.tokbox.com)
is a free, hosted video messaging service. You can record up to a 10 minute
video clip that can be shared by URL link. TokBox also includes a video
chat feature that enables multiple people to video conference. This feature
works great with study teams.

Skype (http://www.skype.com)
includes chat, audio and video-conferencing. The chat feature works
probably better than what you have been using. With a headset/microphone,
you can have up to 10+ people in a audio conference call.
Video-conferencing is 1:1 and includes a great screen sharing feature.

You can really change the nature of team collaboration when you combine
Google Docs and Spreadsheets with TokBox and/or Skype. Following is an
example of how to do this.

EXAMPLE

Students use Google Docs to create a shared workspace for writing a paper.
One student sets up the workspace and invites team members into the space
through an email link. Each team member is given editor rights.

Using a headset/microphone and webcam, students use TokBox to host a group
video conference call. This enables students to brainstorm and get a
project running.

During the work process, each team member adds/changes the paper in the
common workspace in Google Docs.

When it is time to pull the paper together and do final editing, students
use the audio conference call feature to talk with each other. While all
are online in Skype, each team member logs into the Google Docs paper and
views it on his/her computer screen. One or more students act as the
editor. All see changes as they are made.

When editing is finished, one student exports the final assignment document
in .pdf format to his/her hard drive. The student then submits the document
for grading (e.g., student uploads the paper through the Digital Drop Box in
Blackboard).

OUTCOME

By combining the features of Google Docs and Spreadsheets with communication
tools like TokBox and Skype, students learn how to use technology to get
things done. Major companies pay a fortune to do what your students can do
for free. Purchasing a headset/microphone and webcam is relatively
inexpensive. The experience students get is priceless.

I use this approach and technology tools with face-2-face, blended, and
online classes. It works great. The approach changes the nature of how
students and instructor interact in the teaching-learning experience.

“I never thought I could work so hard. I never thought I could learn so
much. I never thought I could think so deeply. And, it was actually fun.”
(Joe Hoyle)

January 25, 2012 update from Amy Dunbar

Hi Bob,

I’m now using Google Docs with my undergrad students, too. (I’m back in the
classroom after 12 years online.) No one needs instructions on how to use
the tool anymore. I particularly like the chat function in the
spreadsheet. Students generally use the Google chat feature instead of AIM.
To make sure I have access to the spreadsheets, I set them up for each group
and send the groups the link. Google is truly making learning collaborative.
At the end of the semester, I delete them all and start over with the next
class.

And a follow-up to Rick Lillie’s suggestion to read

Clark, R.
C., and R. E. Mayer. 2011. E-Learning and the Science of Instruction:
Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning
Third ed. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.

After reading that book, I revised all my content modules in an effort to
reduce cognitive overload. Now I use dropdown windows to provide examples,
problems, comments. My Dunbar comments are coded a different color, so they
can ignore them. ;-) When I mapped my quizzes back to the content modules,
I discovered that a lot of my material was not on point for the quizzes, and
thus wasn’t essential to what I thought they should know cold when the
course was over. That extra material is now in a drop-down window titled
“more,” which students can read if they want to know more. The content on
each page is now fairly straightforward (she says hopefully). Thank you,
Rick, for suggesting that book. It changed the way I create my content
modules.

The OpenScout Tool Library is a social network of
individuals and collectives who are developing or using learning resources
and want to share their stories and resources from different countries.

The OpenScout Tool Library is currently hosting the activities of the
COLEARN community of research in collaborative learning and educational
technologies in the Portuguese language. This group is run by Alexandra
Okada (The Open University UK) and consists of learners, educators and
researchers from academic institutions in Brazil, Portugal and Spain. Their
interests focus on collaborative participation through social media,
colearning (collaborative open learning) using Open Educational Resources (OER),
Social Media and Web 2.0 research. There are 26 research groups from
Brazilian and Portugal universities - 115 people currently registered in the
Tool Library.

At the moment, this community is developing a book project called "Web 2.0:
Open Educational Resources in Learning and Professional Development". From
January to February 2012, three workshops will be run in the Tool Library
for improving OER skills: image, presentation and audio/visual material.
These collaborative activities and workshops aim at engaging people in
developing their skills and discussing concepts as well as preparing
themselves to be OER users who are able to produce, remix and share open
resources and open ideas.

HETL is a professional organization dedicated to
advancing teaching and learning in higher education. It got its start on
LinkedIn with discussion groups. To participate in the discussion group, a
collegiate teacher (and now doctoral students) would have to apply. If the
applicant had 2-5 years experience teaching in higher education (and met
certain disclosure requirements on their profile), they were admitted.

LinkedIn membership is now over 10,000 and rapidly climing. I believe it is
the largest LinkedIn discussion group. Knowing me, you'd probably expect
that I'd get involved in the discussions. I have. I answered a call for
volunteers, and am now a reviewer for its publications. There are two
refereed venues. One is for commentary pieces on higher education. So far,
contributors have been well-known academics such as Dee Fink. The other is
an on-line journal.

Currently, HETL has a call out for volunteers to expand its editorial and
review boards. Information can be found at the HETL portal (http://hetl.org).
While there, you can see that an option is to join with a paid membership
($60 per year).

I really like the give and take with profs from around the world. There
were over 450 comments on a thread about whether or not to be a Facebook
friend with a student.

You can find out more information about the group from the web site:http://hetl.org

If you have to jointly
author a spreadsheet with a colleague, what is the first thing that you do?
Email it back and forth. This can be painful, particularly as you try to
keep track of your partner's changes and hope the emails transit back and
forth across the Internet. Add a third or fourth person, and things get
worse. Luckily, there is a better way, and a number of Web-based service
providers have stepped up with tools to make spreadsheet sharing a lot
easier than sending attachments.

We've written about a
few of them, including
Longjumpand Hyperbase (one of our products of the
year for 2008), but I have tried a bunch others, and will show you what is
involved and how they stack up.

The process is very
straightforward: you either copy and paste data or take your spreadsheet and
upload it to the service, after creating accounts for you and your
collaborators. Then you can make changes via your Web browser, no other
software is required. Some of the services allow for more bells and
whistles. Setup time is minimal; your data is properly protected by the
service and safe from harm. And you don't need to learn any Web/database
programming skills either.

For many people, the
spreadsheet is still one of the most popular low-end database applications.
The rubric of a table of rows and columns is easily understood and can
easily be used as a way to view records and fields of a database. Plus, you
don't need to design special reports to view your data entries, and you can
easily sort your data without having to create data dictionaries or other
database structures, just use the appropriate Excel commands. Having a
specialized service that can share this data makes it easier to collaborate
too, whether your partners are across the office or on the other side of the
world. As long as they have an Internet connection, they are good to go.

There are eight different
services currently available, in order of increasing cost:

Pricing and
support

When you decide on the
particular service, it pays to read the pricing fine print. There are
discounts for annual subscriptions on most services, and some such as
Smartsheet offer additional discounts for non-profit and educational
institutions. All of these services have 14 day or 30 day free trials to
get started, so you can get a feel of what is involved in manipulating
your data and how easy it is to make changes, produce reports, and
receive notifications.

Continued in article

June 18, 2011 reply from Amy Dunbar

I find Google docs great for small spreadsheets,
but cumbersome for large files.

I set up Dropbox folders for each of my groups in
my online class (3-5 students in a group). They post their project
spreadsheets in the group folders, and if a student has a question, I can
quickly open the spreadsheet to see what is going on. Students contact me by
AIM and we discuss the spreadsheet via AIM. Works like a charm for me.

I just
finished the first week of a 12-week MSA online tax course at UConn. I put
students in groups and I ask them to work fairly lengthy quizzes (homework)
independently, putting their answers in an Excel spreadsheet, and then they
meet in chats to discuss their differences. When they can’t resolve a
question, they invite me into chat. This week a student introduced me to
Google docs, and I was swept off my feet by the way this tool could be used
in my class. I love it! I created a video on the fly on Thursday to
illustrate how to create a spreadsheet and share it with other group
members. I may be the last to the party on this tool, but in case some of
you aren’t aware of it, I am posting the video.

I use Google
Docs and Spreadsheets with all of my courses. It's free, includes most of the
Microsoft Office features, and makes it easy for students to collaborate on team
projects. It also makes it easy to submit the final document in various formats
(e.g., .pdf format).

My students
use two communication tools in conjunction with Google Docs and Spreadsheets
(i.e., TokBox and Skype). To use these tools, they need a headset/microphone
and webcam.

TokBox (http://www.tokbox.com)
is a free, hosted video messaging service. You can record up to a 10 minute
video clip that can be shared by URL link. TokBox also includes a video chat
feature that enables multiple people to video conference. This feature works
great with study teams.

Skype (http://www.skype.com)
includes chat, audio and video-conferencing. The chat feature works probably
better than what you have been using. With a headset/microphone, you can have
up to 10+ people in a audio conference call. Video-conferencing is 1:1 and
includes a great screen sharing feature.

You can
really change the nature of team collaboration when you combine Google Docs and
Spreadsheets with TokBox and/or Skype. Following is an example of how to do
this.

EXAMPLE

Students use
Google Docs to create a shared workspace for writing a paper. One student sets
up the workspace and invites team members into the space through an email link.
Each team member is given editor rights.

Using a
headset/microphone and webcam, students use TokBox to host a group video
conference call. This enables students to brainstorm and get a project running.

During the
work process, each team member adds/changes the paper in the common workspace in
Google Docs.

When it is
time to pull the paper together and do final editing, students use the audio
conference call feature to talk with each other. While all are online in
Skype, each team member logs into the Google Docs paper and views it on his/her
computer screen. One or more students act as the editor. All see changes as
they are made.

When editing
is finished, one student exports the final assignment document in .pdf format to
his/her hard drive. The student then submits the document for grading (e.g.,
student uploads the paper through the Digital Drop Box in Blackboard).

OUTCOME

By combining
the features of Google Docs and Spreadsheets with communication tools like
TokBox and Skype, students learn how to use technology to get things done.
Major companies pay a fortune to do what your students can do for free.
Purchasing a headset/microphone and webcam is relatively inexpensive. The
experience students get is priceless.

I use this
approach and technology tools with face-2-face, blended, and online classes. It
works great. The approach changes the nature of how students and instructor
interact in the teaching-learning experience.

While I am familiar with most of what Bonk
writes about, just about every chapter introduces me to something
new. For example, Chapter 8, “Collaborate or Die!” introduced me to
Collanos Workspace, a free
collaboration workspace software tool developed by
Collanos Software, AG (Zurich,
Switzerland). Collanos Workspace is a workspace tool similar in
design to
Grooveworkspace, originally
developed by Ray
Ozzie. Groove is now integrated into
Microsoft Office . Ray Ozzie is the guiding light for Microsoft’s
move toward cloud computing.

Last week, I posted comments aboutCollanos Workspace.
I asked several Master of Science in Accountancy (MSA) grad students that I
will direct in a self-study project during Spring Quarter 2010 to download
Collanos Workspace. They have gotten up and running very quickly. So far,
I am really impressed with the features of Collanos Workspace and how easy
it is to use.

While Collanos Workspace does not
have all the built-in bells and whistles ofMicrosoftGroove,
the bells and whistles are easily replaced by Web 2.0
tools (e.g., Skype, TokBox, and Google Docs and Spreadsheets). Web 2.0
sharing/collaboration tools can be used in conjunction with the Collanos
Workspace. This is very easy to do.

This morning, one of my students called me onSkype.
He shared his desktop with me and then opened his
Collanos Workspace. I have two monitor screens, so I opened my Collanos
Workspace on my other monitor. We talked on Skype. He added files and
posted a note to his workspace. Since we were both online, the items he
added instantly added and displayed on my workspace. Outstanding
performance!

I am working on papers with a couple of
colleagues. I am going to do my best to persuade them to download and use
Collanos Workspace. We can work together both live and offline. I cannot
say enough about the convenience that Collanos Workspace offers.

This new tool is taking me back to my “Groove”
days. I really liked Groove and hated to see it get buried as an advanced
feature of Microsoft Office.

In a previous posting, I introduced you to
Collanos Workplace and told you how great the
collaboration software is, especially for use with distance teaching and
learning projects. I have used it successfully with both undergraduate and
graduate students. For example, during Winter Quarter 2010, I used Collanos
Workplace to guide five grad students through independent study projects.
Collanos Workplace made it easy to communicate with students and keep the
whole process under control. In a nutshell, I felt that Collanos
Workplace was a great collaboration tool!

Faculty members and information-technology staff
members alike say technology is useful for teaching and learning, but
professors take a narrower view of what technology belongs in today's
classroom, according to a report released on Monday by the technology
company CDW Government Inc.

Eighty-eight percent of the 303 faculty members
surveyed said technology was essential or useful for student learning, and
over 60 percent said they used electronic materials in their teaching,
according to the report.

The most popular tools cited by professors were
e-textbooks and online documents, with faculty members reporting far less
enthusiasm for other electronic tools. Under a quarter of faculty members
surveyed use wikis or blogs in their teaching, and only 31 percent of
professors surveyed considered online collaboration tools "essential" to
today's classroom, compared with 72 percent of over 300 IT employees
surveyed.

That suggests an interesting gap between technology
staff members and professors when it comes to how smart classrooms need to
be. How wired should teaching spaces be?

Perhaps IT employees already know how to use such
tools. I am self taught but have been evangelizing wikis to my faculty
colleagues. I have even voluntarily led a faculty workshop on wikis--just to
help my colleagues learn how to use them.

I think there are at least three problems that
might explain this "gap" between IT and faculty attitudes. First, for many
faculty there is a learning curve: on top of structuring course material,
they have to learn the vagaries of specific software or platforms. Second,
there are so many options for tech tools many faculty don't know which are
most appropriate for their teaching style. Who can guide them to the tools
most useful for their teaching? Third, many faculty, at least at my
institution, don't have enough technical support in the classroom. Let's say
an instructor has prepared a class period on collaborative work on a wiki:
the network goes down (too frequent an occurrence on our campus) or the data
projector malfunctions. S/he calls computer services for help--no one is
available to troubleshoot until it is too late.

The existence of technology tools is not enough.
Faculty need help, training, and technical support before such tools can be
used effectively.

2. arrive2__net - July 20, 2010 at 05:06 am

The information-technology staff members provide
support across all faculty members, so their answers probably would reflect
the perceived needs across all faculty. Faculty are likely answering just
for themselves. Faculty have to pay a lot of attention to what is going on
in their own field, they have to keep up-to-date with what often turns out
to be a moving target. For professors, learning, developing, and practicing
applications of new learning technologies is a whole other work effort that
goes on top of their existing full time job of being a teacher and a scholar
(and often a researcher). Another factor is that a professor can get burned
by investing a lot of time developing and learning tech applications if
then, he or she turns out not to be teaching that course next year or term,
or if changes in the text or field renders the tech application out-of-date.
For IT, on the other hand, the technology is their bread-and-butter, so
naturally ... (you'd better bet) it matters.

Bernard Schuster Arrive2.net

3. beveridge - July 20, 2010 at 07:09 am

At Queens College, where I teach, seven different
sign-ons are required for students to have full access to the various types
of computer systems they need: Account to Claim College System Account,
College System Account, E-mail Account, Blackboard Account, Cuny Portal
Account, MyQc Web Account, Portal Account for Library Access, Account for
Remote Access.

Any of these tools: wikis, e-portfolios, blogs, add
still another level of access issues and make teaching even more difficult
with extremely limited resources.

In a recent survey, we found tht about 15% of
students do not have adequate access to do their work in a Statistics class.
About half drop out, and the other half jump through significant hoops to
get them.

You can easily fix the sign-on problem. Just use a
student portal that supplies all needs in one place. A very simple
aggregator of all contant in one place that is accessible 24/7/365. This is
the problem. Just take a look at my site and see. http://www.thecampuscenter.com
everything in one place and for free no seat charges no cost.

5. mberman54 - July 20, 2010 at 08:05 am

I'll throw in an IT prefessional's point of view:
It's our job to be futurists in this area. Pin one of us down and we'll
admit that we don't know which of the tools we advocate for today will still
be around in 10 years, but we also know that if they're not around, the
functions will be subsumed into other things. We also know, from supporting
our student populations, that the students are trending strongly towards a
preference for online communications. Morningsider made the important point
that many faculty don't know how to use, or are uncomfortable, with these
tools. From experience I can promise you that they will get easier to use
over time, but in the meantime we're here to help you, and if you want to
reach your students, you'll find them online.

6. infogoon - July 20, 2010 at 08:05 am

@beveridge - There are many single sign-on
technologies that would help with that. Industry standards like LDAP and
Kerberos are supported by most systems (email, Blackboard, etc.) and can be
used to synchronize passwords across multiple login environments.

My school decided to bite the bullet and deploy a
solution to mitigate this same problem a few years back. It's a fair amount
of legwork, but not especially cutting edge or difficult for most
environments.

7. infogoon - July 20, 2010 at 08:06 am

(Oh, I forgot to mention - Blackboard does _not_
support LDAP authentication on their lowest tier product, forcing you to buy
a huge and expensive bundle of additional services instead. They're an
exception. We got around the problem by switching to another LMS, since our
contract with them ended during this deployment.)

8. vudutu - July 20, 2010 at 08:17 am

There are a number of problems, the usual budget
issues, management by committee, lack of training, dated and overly complex
systems and tools, poor direction, lack of faculty involvement in
understanding IT and not feeling inclusion in IT decisions.

That all said I believe the biggest issue is
digital immigrants teaching digital natives. The most digitaly enabled and
accepting are the adjuncts, the aging faculty are frozen in the digital
headlights. IT personel, like the younger students live with tech so they
accept it.

9. csgirl - July 20, 2010 at 08:22 am

I'm in computer science, and if anything, tend to
be ahead of our IT staff when it comes to nifty online tools. My teaching is
of course very dependent on technology. My problem is, I can't get IT to
adequately support the tools that I need - software repositories, bug
tracking systems, any IDE other than Visual Studio - so I have to spend a
lot of time doing my own setup and support. I also find that IT is its own
little closed world. They don't have much inkling of the teaching needs of
faculty, so the applications they choose to promote are often not that
useful.

10. jleone - July 20, 2010 at 08:23 am

At RIT, we have a strong ITS and excellent support
services for using technology in the classroom. And while older faculty tend
to be lass facile with technology, it isn't uniformly true. At age 72, I
have pushed myself to stay current with technology. Of course, I teach in
the computing disciplines. We have access to very high quality seminares and
workshops for faculty on our campus. We have access to hi-tech rooms for
recording lectures. Our major problem is the strong push for scholarly
endeavors, a recent (past 10 years) in the direction our institution has
taken.

11. interface - July 20, 2010 at 08:39 am

Every IT department has its favorite platforms;
every IT person has preferred programs and ways of accomplishing any given
task; every administration has different notions of the place of technology
in the classroom. And those favorites and preferences and notions keep
changing. If you're an adjunct working for different institutions, as more
and more of us are, it's tiring and time-consuming and ultimately
counterproductive to try to adjust to them all. One thing's true across the
board: those most enamored of technology are the first to lose sight of the
fact that it's a good servant and a bad master, and that there's no
substitute for the human connection necessary for good teaching.

12. clancymarshall - July 20, 2010 at 08:50 am

The DynamicBooks platform is an e-book that enables
instructors to upload online documents, audio and video and also to edit the
text to make it more relevant for students. What do you think? Will
instructors in 21st Century classrooms customize e-books for their students
or use them as is?

13. 3224243 - July 20, 2010 at 09:21 am

#9 (csgirl) - I'm at a comprehensive state
institution with 8500 students and 300 faculty. All of our general-use
classrooms (appx 100) have a base level of technology with upgrades
performed regularly and newgen technology implemented as budget allows. What
we provide and support is a result of what faculty members request. And, we
do it with 2.5 FTE.

Get off your high horse. You're not the only
instructor on campus and you're not the only one we support.

14. catlkelley - July 20, 2010 at 09:21 am

From the title I thought this article would be
about the classroom itself - i.e. what technologies need to be installed in
a classroom, such as data projectors and smart boards.

In any case, from an IT / teaching support point of
view, I agree with comment #2 above. If 25% (or even 10%) of our faculty
need or want a particular technology, then that is 100% a concern for me. So
I am not at all surprised that the numbers of IT people who find particular
technologies to be "essential" is much higher than the numbers of faculty
who say that about the same technology. I am actually surprised that the
numbers for IT staff aren't higher than they are.

Reading through the comments so far, it is very
clear to me that there is a great deal of variability in the kind of support
that is provided to faculty. And by this I do not mean only the breadth of
technologies available. I mean the support that faculty need to thoughtfully
integrate technology into the curriculum. My office is dedicated to the
concept mentioned by "interface" in comment #11 - namely, technology is a
good servant but bad master. We try to focus on teaching & learning first
and technology only when it will help. It's a difficult thing to do, as we
are also bound to keep up with current trends and new technologies. We'd
like to see adventurous faculty try out the new stuff so that we can gauge
its utility in real life.

15. broekhuysen - July 20, 2010 at 09:44 am

I wonder how many of the faculty members surveyed
are teachers of foreign languages -- I'd be willing to bet that a very
higher percentage of them use technology regularly (as long as they teach in
institutions with the specific professional support they need) -- and not
only in "labs", for doing homework, but as a constant presence in the
classrooom -- if they have the kind of access they need.

16. alex369 - July 20, 2010 at 10:32 am

Let me get this straight: The Chronicle publishes a
free ad for CDW Government Inc., a private company with undisclosed
interests, and there is a serious debate about the company's claims?

17. jeanniec - July 20, 2010 at 10:40 am

@alex369 Agreed. Why is this even posted here?
According to the report you can contact Kelly Caraher CDW-G Public Relations
for more information. Her title says it all.

18. drjeff - July 20, 2010 at 10:44 am

As an IT guy, I couldn't sit here a "listen" to
everyone saying how "easy" it is to do "single sign-on." (This is what IT
folks call integrating things to the point that students -- and faculty --
don't have a separate account on each little fiefdom's system.)

Yes, the technology to do it is reasonably
well-known (even if beyond the least expensive version of Blackboard and
some other products). All you do it install, set up and populate a directory
system (usualy LDAP), then make every system refer to it rather than its own
database. But, because the various systems are, on most campuses, highly
Balkanzed (at least in their ownership), many campuses, like many
corporations, find it exceptionally difficult to get essentially every
department to dedicate the effort (even if fairly small) to support the
project, which is what's necessary to actually make it happen.

In corporations, the CEO or COO usually ends up
"pushing" successful implementations, or else it takes literally years. On a
campus, it often takes the President. The next person in line (on our
campus, it's the Executive VP for Finance and Administration) may or may not
have the necessary "pull" with some of the departments.

Don't forget, we're probably talking about everyone
from the Rec center to the Religious Studies department to the Credit Union,
not to mention Food Services, Computer Science and the LGBTQ Center. Did I
leave out Middle Eastern studies and the repair shop behind the research
labs? You get the idea.

Sure, you (or I) can describe what has to be done
with one sentence. Getting it done? That's going to take a little more.

19. csgirl - July 20, 2010 at 11:29 am

#13, you guys sound seriously overwhelmed, and I
can appreciate that. I used to teach at a comprehensive state U that sounds
remarkably like what you are describing. But that isn't what this article is
talking about. The article seems to be discussing a gap between supremely
knowledgable IT people and Luddite professors who won't adopt the wonderful
technology the IT people recommend (at least, this is how the IT folks see
it). This is the mentality I deal with at my current school, where we have
armies of IT specialists. The problem is, our IT people are spending tons of
time playing with whiz-bang technology that no professor has requested,
congratulating themselves on how "advanced" they are, instead of educating
themselves on the technology that we actually need and use.

20. jboncek - July 20, 2010 at 11:45 am

Technology is sometimes useful, but hardly
essential.

21. lizlanin - July 20, 2010 at 11:58 am

"For professors, learning, developing, and
practicing applications of new learning technologies is a whole other work
effort that goes on top of their existing full time job of being a teacher
and a scholar (and often a researcher)."

Shocker, sounds like my job in the corporate world.
I too have to learn new technologies in order to do my full-time job... why
should professors be any different?

Social networking tools such as Twitter and the
emerging Google Wave web application are taking individuals and
organizations to the frontiers of real-time communication and collaboration.
The technology has the potential to make it easier to discover and share
information, interact with others, and decide what to buy or do. But the key
word is "potential": Social networking's evolution is still in its early
stages. What makes the current crop of services more promising than those
that came before? What are the obstacles to further progress?

An expert panel debated these questions at the
annual Supernova technology strategy conference, produced in partnership
with Wharton and held last winter in San Francisco. The 2010Supernova forumwill be held this month in Philadelphia.

The panel at the San Francisco event was chaired by
David Weinberger, a fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for
Internet and Society and co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto. Appearing on
the panel were: Anna-Christina Douglas, product marketing manager at Google;
Laura Fitton, principal of Pistachio Consulting and co-author of Twitter for
Dummies; Paul Lippe, founder and CEO of Legal OnRamp; Jason Shellen, founder
and CEO of Thing Labs, and Deborah Schultz, a partner with the Altimeter
Group. In addition, Google engineers were in the room demonstrating Google
Wave by allowing the audience to post to the social networking service
during the session; their comments appeared in real time on projection
screens near the panelists.

Weinberger began the session by asking panelists
what made the introduction of social networking tools different from
previous technological endeavors to improve communication and collaboration.
One significant issue discussed was how social networking compared with
knowledge management (KM). KM systems first appeared on the scene about 20
years ago and once represented the frontier, embodying companies' most
innovative ideas for integrating internal access to disparate information in
order to improve communication, collaboration and business processes.

KM systems were implemented through technologies
such as web portals, e-mail networks, content management systems and
business intelligence infrastructure. Web portals, which were probably the
most successful type of KM system, allow users to access a range of
information -- including reports, diagrams, catalogs and maintenance records
-- through one interface, rather than many. The portals also include
external information supplied by business partners, government agencies and
news sources. The technology automatically pulls information from the
sources on demand so that users do not have to search for it manually.

Organizations employ KM systems to increase the
value of their "intellectual capital." However, the technology that supports
KM systems has traditionally been difficult to develop and deploy. And the
systems have not been universally successful at fostering real time
collaboration between employees.

According to Shellen -- who was part of the
development teams for Google's blogging program and Reader aggregator
service -- before social networking tools enabled quick and casual
communication, many bloggers in corporate organizations had "some KM tool
where you captured the knowledge in the tool's silo and assigned all sorts
of tags, folders and so on to it. You would then pass the blog to your
manager for him or her to [learn from] what you were writing." Shellen now
heads Thing Labs, a San Francisco-based company that builds web-based
software for sharing content. Social networking is easing some of the
frustration users in many organizations have encountered with traditional KM
systems. Through use of Twitter and other tools, more of the intellectual
capital that KM systems once guarded is flowing freely, in real time, inside
and outside organizations. If an employee needs to find expertise or share
information, he or she doesn't have to work within the rigid confines of a
KM system, or even the confines of his or her organization. Instead, the
employee can use social media to collaborate with others and to find answers
more quickly and put relevant advice into practice.

While there are virtues to being able to
communicate faster and more easily with social networking tools, panelists
agreed that many organizations are struggling to adjust to the spontaneity
and loss of control over information that comes with these tools. Concerned
that organizations will eventually clamp down, Weinberger asked, "Will all
the fun be stripped out of it? Will people become afraid to Tweet about
things that are not strictly business-related?" Fitton, whose consulting
firm focuses on helping companies to use micro-blogging in a business
environment, suggested that companies may find the "messy and random
serendipity" of Twitter and other social networks to be more efficient than
lumbering KM systems and processes. "It brings an infusion of humanity to
business," she noted, who adding that, in her experiences at Pistachio
Consulting, she has observed social networking having an impact on
organizations by leveling management hierarchies, accelerating team-building
across geographical locations, and improving mentoring. She stated that, in
some cases, research to find human expertise that used to take many hours
can happen much faster when queries are "flung out into the commons" to
catch the attention of people who can provide answers more quickly.

Breadth vs. Depth

One of the advantages social networking tools have
over KM systems, experts say, is that they simplify the process of obtaining
information that would be useful to a business or employee. Tools such as
Twitter provide a sort of "KM in the cloud," allowing users to collaborate
with each other and send messages to locate expertise without a company
having to build and maintain a complex and expensive system to provide these
capabilities internally. Social networking tools provide access to a broad
population and employ simple, standardized, techniques to link users to
information. But while social networking offers "an enormous amount of
horizontal power," Lippe said, "most of the hard collaboration problems are
[solved] in vertical domains." His firm, Legal OnRamp, is a collaboration
platform for lawyers that allows information to be collected and shared
virtually. Membership is by invitation only.

Lippe noted that, in the legal field, "there's
already a structure of knowledge, and most knowledge repositories and
structures of the collaborative web have existed for multiple generations.
So, the question is, how do you tap into them?" One core structure is
attorney-client privilege, which Lippe said "has long preceded the
information confidentiality and security regime that we all have now. It
creates the structure of what you can and cannot share." In the legal
universe, he added, the messy serendipity of "horizontal" social networking
cannot solve the hardest problems. "Lawyers have some questions they will
answer for free, and others that they will figure out a way to get paid to
answer."

But the legal field's communication sensitivities
are "a very specific case," Shellen pointed out. He noted that companies
have built private social networks that feature protected blogs and search
engines, and that these tools have proven effective in achieving new forms
of collaboration while keeping information secure. Organizations are now
incorporating use of Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and other social media into
their daily routines, although they are in need of systems that can
integrate and update the information being posted across all of the
platforms. Shellen's Thing Labs produces a reader called "Brizzly" that can
be used to provide that service.

Lippe agreed that, despite the concerns he noted,
large legal firms have an opportunity to use social networking to
reestablish an intimacy with clients that they may have lost as the
businesses grew larger and adjusted to structural changes in the industry.
Lippe wrote recently on his Legal OnRamp blog that social networking tools
can be used to save attorneys from "e-mail and attachment overload" and to
"share existing knowledge or collaborate on new work [including] high volume
work like commercial contracts and high complexity work like major case
litigation."

Office culture plays a significant role in what
platform is used to share information, according to Schultz, a partner with
the San Mateo, Calif.-based Altimeter Group, a technology strategy
consulting firm. She noted that media companies, for example, may be a
better fit for the horizontal nature of social networking. Schultz has been
active in social media and networking for many years and has advised
organizations ranging from startups to Fortune 50 companies, including
Citibank and Procter & Gamble. At P&G, she built the P&G Social Media Lab, a
program that enables the company to study the new dynamics of customer
relationships in the age of social networking, and to use social media to
break the mold of standard marketing measures and approaches that were
geared toward older types of media. By encouraging brand managers to pay
close attention to what customers were saying on community sites and other
social networking places, Schultz said the Lab has helped P&G redefine how
it engages, communicates with and uses marketing to influence consumers. "I
see the tools making the roles we have more porous," she stated. "As the
consumer-driven nature of social networking moves into organizations, the
collaboration potential of their use becomes more interesting."

The use of tools like Twitter and Google Wave
"definitely make a cultural statement," said Douglas. The Google product
marketing manager described how Google Wave has the capabilities for
real-time, rolling conversation and collaboration among users that can
include messages, links and attachments. Douglas noted that each
conversation or "wave" can be modified with different editing and replying
privileges so that enterprises can "exercise controls for how people want to
lock down content." The Google engineers demonstrated the application on the
big screen behind the panelists; they showed how users can comment with
links embedded in their messages and also load attachments.

Google Wave could be used effectively for private
communication inside the firewall, as well as for working with a diverse
community outside an organization, panelists said. Previous KM systems did
not easily integrate communication with content management, making it
difficult to use existing tools to access and manage information during real
time conversations. Google Wave and other social networking tools offer the
potential of a much tighter integration between communication and content,
meaning conversations can include richer information sharing and easier
references to content available across the organization.

To Shellen, the most interesting aspect to how
social networking and collaboration tools are used is users' ability to join
ongoing conversations. He said his firm is currently building a "data set on
top of that engagement, where we ask people to explain trending topics on
Twitter." The combination of immediate updates plus access to more in-depth
information can enhance knowledge. "Tools like Twitter make me much smarter
about you," Schultz noted. "And the 'you' could be an entity or an
individual." She said that with the right kind of filtering, people can
collaborate and make more effective use of the information available on
social networks. "Companies can collaborate in real time with customers on
products and even pricing."

But does the 140-character limit for posts to
Twitter enable engagement, or is it "a sign of triviality?" asked
Weinberger. "Constraints breed invention," replied Shellen. Douglas added
that communities using Twitter, Google Wave and other tools are creating
their own etiquette. Panelists agreed that both the creation of etiquette
for particular conversations and the sheer ability to engage in several
discussions at once would be difficult using blogs and older forms of web
content sharing programs.

An Open and Vibrant World

Weinberger asked the panelists whether progress
toward the real-time collaboration frontier is being driven by new
technology or human needs. Speaking to the human needs, Fitton observed that
social networking tools such as Twitter "help us overcome human isolation in
a way that is not brand new but is happening on a different scale." She said
that the collaboration possible on the site is a question of "not just;
'What are you doing?' but, 'What do we have in common?'" Fulfilling that
need is what fascinates her about the phenomenon. Shellen added: "There's
accountability behind it; we now have modes of identity tied to short bursts
of communication that are very much 'you.'"

February 16, 2006 message from Vidya Ananthanarayanan to the faculty at
Trinity University

Dear Faculty,

Ever wished your bookmarks
in Internet Explorer or other browsers were accessible anytime anyplace?
Ever wanted to share your Internet resources with your class, research
colleagues, or peers? How would you like to know what information sources
other people in your field are using? Perhaps, you simply want to organize
all your bookmarks in a manner that is more meaningful and personal to you?
How often have you been frustrated by an outdated or broken URL and wished
you could have saved the article or paper itself?

Want to find out more about
how you can do any or all of the above? Then mark your calendars for the
Social Bookmarking: Tag & Share! TEACHnology Seminar in Library Room 103
from 10:00 - 11:15 am tomorrow. We will explore online services like
del.icio.us and CiteULike, and discuss ways to leverage them in
the classroom and in your research. Refreshments will be served.

CiteULike is a free service to help academics to
share, store, and organise the academic papers they are reading. When you
see a paper on the web that interests you, you can click one button and have
it added to your personal library. CiteULike automatically extracts the
citation details, so there's no need to type them in yourself. It all works
from within your web browser. There's no need to install any special
software.

Because your library is stored on the server, you
can access it from any computer. You can share your library with others, and
find out who is reading the same papers as you. In turn, this can help you
discover literature which is relevant to your field but you may not have
known about.

You're currently looking at a list of the last few
papers submitted by all the CiteULike users. Why not register for a free
account today and start organising your collection and see just the articles
you're interested in? All we need is your email address, a username, and a
password. It should take less than fifteen seconds.

IATH is a research unit of the University of
Virginia. Our goal is to explore and develop information technology as a
tool for scholarly humanities research. To that end, we provide our Fellows
with consulting, technical support, applications development, and networked
publishing facilities. We also cultivate partnerships and participate in
humanities computing initiatives with libraries, publishers, information
technology companies, scholarly organizations, and other groups residing at
the intersection of computers and cultural heritage.

The research projects, essays, and documentation
presented here are the products of a unique collaboration between humanities
and computer science research faculty, computer professionals, student
assistants and project managers, and library faculty and staff. In many
cases, this work is supported by private or federal funding agencies. In all
cases, it is supported by the Fellows’ home departments; the College or
School to which those departments belong; the University of Virginia
Library; the Vice President for Research and Public Service; the Vice
President and Chief Information Officer; the Provost; and the President of
the University of Virginia.

News Update from Campus Technology on January 11,
2005

Creating the Classroom of Tomorrow

What does it take to successfully integrate all
systems across a campus? Planning, communication, flexibility, and more. In a
new micro site sponsored by HP, you'll read how several campuses approached
their IIS projects and what made them successful. Join a peer forum to discuss
implementation and budget issues; read white papers, case studies and articles
on the challenges of integration.

Perhaps the most
significant new "feature" in the new release is the hook that Adobe is
providing to other revenue-enhancing products like Acrobat Connect, which
provides web-conferencing capabilities within Reader for a competitive price
to
www.gotomeeting.com (which I use). Incidentally, I
personally believe that such a web conferencing product is an indispensable
feature of any Internet-delivered accounting course.

One intriguing new
development in the new Acrobat PROFESSIONAL version ( the pdf creation
tool), is the ability to create forms that can be filled out and saved by
users who have the free Reader. This is a departure from prior practice for
Adobe, because they were trying to sell more expensive server software to
facilitate that task.

Jensen Comment
I'm reminded of Steve Hornik at Central Florida who stands in front of a
classroom of over 1,000 students. The above article presents Chris Dede's ideas
on how to customize large lecture and case courses to the varying needs of
individual students.

The paper describes a procedural model implemented
at Ohio State University that shares similar content and interaction among
international partner classes for a short time, usually 3-5 weeks. The model
is flexible and adaptive to any discipline at both the graduate and
undergraduate levels and includes expertise from both partnering
instructors. Technologies are embedded to integrate a variety of structured
opportunities for interaction and to utilize different teaching and learning
strategies. There is no exchange of credits or funding, and all instructors
are individually responsible for grading their own students, thus allowing
subject expertise and peer interaction from around the world at no extra
personal cost. The model can be implemented to internationalize an entire
curriculum to a broad spectrum of learners world-wide with a significantly
reduced carbon footprint, at minimal cost, and in direct response to the
needs of higher education.

Jensen Comment

I suspect that Ruth Sesco independently developed a model that was invented
for an international accounting course by a San Diego State University
accounting professor years ago when the most advanced online technology was
rudimentary.

Use Plickers for quick checks for understanding to know whether your students
are understanding big concepts and mastering key skills ---
https://www.plickers.com/
Thank you Sharon Garvin for the heads up.

When I
first required my students in a large lecture course to use Twitter, many of
the roughly 120 enrolled did not approve. And they voiced that opinion quite
clearly on my evaluations. Their comments could be divided into two
categories: helpful and unhelpful.

Here
are a few of the helpful ones:

“Make Twitter an extra-credit option instead of a requirement.”

“Use another form of communication than Twitter. Twitter is hard to
follow when responding to other’s tweets.”

“The use of Twitter seemed to be a less-effective tool as a mandatory
use for the main classroom discussion. Some students seemed turned off
by the use of it for the course.”

“While some may not find Twitter a necessity, I believe it did prove
more beneficial than detrimental. There were some good discussions that
evolved due to Twitter. It provides for great communication with the
proffesor [sic] as well.”

These
comments are helpful because they express a concern (e.g., Twitter feeds are
tough to follow) and then offer a solution (e.g., perhaps make Twitter
optional). Unfortunately, most of my students’ comments regarding Twitter
fell into the unhelpful category. (Note: Except for inserting single quote
marks for clarity, none of the spelling, grammar, or wording below has been
modified.) Among the unhelpful remarks:

“I
hated Twitter.”

“Twitter should not be mandatory. Twitter shouldn’t be a part of your
grade.”

“[Dr. Marshall’s] ridiculous obsession with Twitter and bringing it into
the classroom is unacceptable — it does not enhance learning, it is just
her pushing her obsession on the rest of us.”

“When I ask questions, they never really get answered, for instance, if
I question on Twitter, [Dr. Marshall] will respond ‘you tell me…’ never
a real response.”

“Twitter forces students to “dumbdown” their language. It goes against
everything I have ever learned. In other words, it is detrimental to our
intelligence!”

“Using Twitter for participation was a terrible idea and should not be
done again. It would be much better if the exams were the only grades.”

Often my first stop when I'm looking for a new
idea for the classroom is Faculty Focus. It
regularly publishes short articles with practical ideas for the college
instructor. It’s a great resource -- well-designed, organized by topic,
and searchable. It also boasts Maryellen Weimer and her Teaching Professor blog,
an outgrowth of Weimer's much-loved newsletter of the same name.
Weimer's articles are little jewels of concision, distilling practical
advice from recent pedagogical research findings.

Another useful site is that of the IDEA Center,
a nonprofit that you may know from its student feedback services. Over
the years, IDEA has amassed a trove of pedagogy research, from short
"Notes on Instruction" to longer, peer-reviewed "IDEA papers." Take a look; there's plenty there.

Speaking of peer-reviewed papers, it's now
easier than ever to plug in to current pedagogy research. Alongside
traditional, research-heavy articles, many pedagogy journals also
feature shorter, more practical papers that offer easily usable ideas.
Here's a good list of top pedagogy journals.

I often find new classroom ideas by visiting
the web pages of campus teaching and learning centers. Many of those
websites have evolved into excellent collections of teaching tips, as
their sponsoring universities have become more attuned to faculty
development. Some of my favorites are the ones at UT Austin, Berkeley, and
BYU.

Closer to home, The Chronicle hosts a
wide variety of good resources for instructors looking for ideas. James
M. Lang has been writing a monthly column on teaching for years now, and
if you're reading this, I probably don't need to tell you how useful his
columns are. Although there doesn't seem to be a dedicated archive page
for Lang's columns, you can find links to his most recent columns by
clicking here and scrolling down to "On Course".
In addition, The Chronicle’s ProfHacker blog,
while it features posts about far more than just teaching, has a roster
of experienced and personable academics frequently write about classroom strategies.
The blog is a particularly good place to go to learn more about using
new technologies in the classroom.

Finally, a promising new resource has just been
launched right here at Vitae: a straightforward and easy-to-use syllabi database.
It’s an obviously useful idea. Teachers have probably shared syllabi for
as long as there has been syllabi; this just facilitates that sharing
across great distances. I’m excited at the prospect of this database
growing and providing a library of well-made syllabi, ready to consult
the next time I’m putting together a new course. It will only be as good
as its contributions, however. The folks at Vitae have made it
very, very easy to upload a syllabus; I just put one up in about 60
seconds. Why not head over there now and share one of yours?

What web resources do you make use of for your
teaching? I’m always eager to learn of more—add your favorite sites to
the comments below.

- See more at: https://chroniclevitae.com/news/770-the-best-teaching-resources-on-the-web?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en#sthash.04UAyWZs.dpuf

Often my first stop when I'm looking for a new idea
for the classroom isFaculty Focus. It
regularly publishes short articles with practical ideas for the college
instructor. It’s a great resource -- well-designed, organized by topic, and
searchable. It also boasts Maryellen Weimer and herTeaching Professor blog,
an outgrowth of Weimer's much-loved newsletter of the
same name. Weimer's articles are little jewels of concision, distilling
practical advice from recent pedagogical research findings.

Another useful site is that of the IDEA Center, a
nonprofit that you may know from its student feedback services. Over the
years, IDEA has amassed a trove of pedagogy research, from short "Notes on
Instruction" to longer, peer-reviewed "IDEA papers." Take a look; there's plenty there.

Speaking of peer-reviewed papers, it's now easier than
ever to plug in to current pedagogy research. Alongside traditional,
research-heavy articles, many pedagogy journals also feature shorter, more
practical papers that offer easily usable ideas.Here's a good list of top pedagogy journals.

I often find new classroom ideas by visiting the web
pages of campus teaching and learning centers. Many of those websites have
evolved into excellent collections of teaching tips, as their sponsoring
universities have become more attuned to faculty development. Some of my
favorites are the ones at
UT Austin,
Berkeley, andBYU.

Closer to home, The Chronicle hosts a wide
variety of good resources for instructors looking for ideas. James M. Lang
has been writing a monthly column on teaching for years now, and if you're
reading this, I probably don't need to tell you how useful his columns are.
Although there doesn't seem to be a dedicated archive page for Lang's
columns, you can find links to his most recent columns byclicking here and scrolling down to "On Course".
In addition, The Chronicle’sProfHackerblog,
while it features posts about far more than just teaching, has a roster of
experienced and personable academicsfrequently write about classroom strategies.
The blog is a particularly good place to go to learn
more about using new technologies in the classroom.

Finally, a promising new resource has just been
launched right here at Vitae:a straightforward and easy-to-use syllabi database.
It’s an obviously useful idea. Teachers have probably
shared syllabi for as long as there has been syllabi; this just facilitates
that sharing across great distances. I’m excited at the prospect of this
database growing and providing a library of well-made syllabi, ready to
consult the next time I’m putting together a new course. It will only be as
good as its contributions, however. The folks at Vitae have made it
very, very easy to upload a syllabus; I just put one up in about 60 seconds.
Why not head over there now and share one of yours?

What web resources do you make use of for your
teaching? I’m always eager to learn of more—add your favorite sites to the
comments below.

Welcome to the official web site of the jigsaw
classroom, a cooperative learning technique that reduces racial conflict
among school children, promotes better learning, improves student
motivation, and increases enjoyment of the learning experience. The jigsaw
technique was first developed in the early 1970s by Elliot Aronson and his
students at the University of Texas and the University of California. Since
then, hundreds of schools have used the jigsaw classroom with great success.
The jigsaw approach is considered to be a particularly valuable tool in
averting tragic events such as the Columbine massacre.

Early this afternoon (November 6), for instance, I
was looking at the wiki that we use for scheduling our posts, trying to
figure out my posting schedule for the next few weeks. I was also wondering
whether I’d be able to post something for the week of November 10. We try to
have our posts in by midnight on Thursday of the week before the post runs,
and I was, quite frankly, drawing a blank on post ideas.

I’d pretty much concluded I’d have to put posting
anything off for a week, and I turned to other concerns. I’ve been
frustrated with my writing (or lack thereof) lately, and I’ve been thinking
I need to restart a daily writing practice — something along the lines ofusing 750words.com,
but without relying on that service

Readers may recall that I recently wrote about
using Evernote in the classroom.
In that post, I noted that I use Evernote for storing
all kinds of information, not just for keeping track of my class notes.
Since everything in my Evernote account is searchable, it seemed a good
place to start keeping that daily writing.

The catch is that I’ve started doing most of my
writing in Markdown, for a number of reasons. (I won’t go into them here,
but if you’d like some good reasons and a quick introduction to
Markdown, check outLincoln’s postfrom a few years back.)
So far as I’m aware, Evernote doesn’t handle Markdown natively. Still, I was
sure there had to be a way to get them working together, and that more than
likely some clever person had already figured something out. So off to
Google I went, and I found this: Evernote for Sublime Text.
I’ve been usingSublime Textfor most of my writing for some months now. A Sublime
Text package that integrates with my Evernote account is ideal. I can do my
writing in the application and markup language I’ve become most accustomed
to using, and can send daily work to my Evernote account with just a few
keystrokes, and without having to leave Sublime Text. The note shows up in
Evernote formatted in rich text, but I can easily open it (or any other note
in my account) again in Sublime Text to continue editing in Markdown. This
may turn out to be just the tool I was looking for.

One web page for every book ever
published. It's a lofty but achievable goal.

To build Open Library, we need
hundreds of millions of book records, a wiki interface, and lots of
people who are willing to contribute their time and effort to building
the site.

To date, we have gathered over 20
million records from a variety of large catalogs as well as single
contributions, with more on the way.

Open Library is an open project: the
software is open, the data are open, the documentation is open, and we
welcome your contribution. Whether you fix a typo, add a book, or write
a widget--it's all welcome. We have a small team of fantastic
programmers who have accomplished a lot, but we can't do it alone!

After over thirty
years of service, the U.S. Department of Education's ERIC Clearinghouses,
and the AskERIC service, permanently closed at the end of December 2003.
ERIC is a national information system funded by the U.S. Department of
Education's Institute of Education Sciences to provide access to education
literature and resources. The Clearinghouses, stationed at various
educational institutions, provided documents and reference services on
educational topics ranging from Elementary and Early Childhood Education
to Urban and Minority Education to Adult, Career, and Vocational
Education.

After over thirty
years of service, the U.S. Department of Education's ERIC Clearinghouses,
and the AskERIC service, permanently closed at the end of December 2003.
ERIC is a national information system funded by the U.S. Department of
Education's Institute of Education Sciences to provide access to education
literature and resources. The Clearinghouses, stationed at various
educational institutions, provided documents and reference services on
educational topics ranging from Elementary and Early Childhood Education
to Urban and Minority Education to Adult, Career, and Vocational
Education.

Many of the students and scholars I know who have
picked up technical skills in the world of the command line (see Lincoln’s
introductionand a
series of posts here at Profhacker) or who have
attempted their hand at programming come to what they know through
tinkering. Some new way they want to analyze their sources, improve the
discovery of interesting patterns, organize their stuff, or automate their
tasks supplies them the justification they need to carve out some time to
learn by playing. Tinkering leads to googling, googling leads into the world
of obscure documentation, endless forum posts, and tutorials usually
targeting a much different audience with differing needs. This adds
significantly to the time it takes to figure things out.

One of the earliest and most consistent exceptions
to this in the case of my own learning is found in the tutorials byWilliam Turkel,
especially through his blog entries and important work
on the
Programming Historianproject. They not only
introduce some really powerful utilities and coding snippets, but apply them
immediately to the kinds of tasks we might find useful as historians and
indeed the broader humanities.

2013 offered a particularly rich harvest of
tutorial material by Turkel on his blog, especially contributing to what he
calls a "workflow for digital research." Most of these help you obtain,
clean, and analyze textual sources. As with most things technological, there
are many different ways to perform most of the tasks listed below, but I
found that these postings give great practical examples of some of the core
techniques of using the command line for manipulating texts. I’d like to
just highlight just some of them and suggest why you might want to give them
a try.

Almost all of Turkel’s
tutorials this year work from the command line. If you use a Mac with OS X,
you already have access to a lot of command line utilities and many others
you can find and install usingHomebrew
or the respective websites for the tool you want. This is not always the
case, however, and for the "permuted term index" utility mentioned in one of
the text analysis posting mentioned below I wasn’t able to find a way to get
it for OS X (tips welcome). A solution to this problem and also for Windows
users is to set up a virtual machine that runs a Linux distribution like
Debian. Turkel’s posting goes through the whole process step by step and
will get you up and running. Also see Lincoln’s
posting here at Profhacker.

A virtual machine is also
very handy to keep self-contained sandboxes when you want to tinker. The
free VirtualBox software used here is very easy to use and if you
participate in the
ArchiveTeam Warriorprogram, you probably already
know how it works. For those working with security sensitive materials, you
can also easily keep a virtual machine and its files encrypted.

This is a great intro to
some of the most useful command line utilities for very basic text analysis.
Using an example from Project Gutenberg, this tutorial uses the command "wget"
to download the file, shows you how to use "head" and "tail" to quickly see
the beginning and end of large files, the use of the "sed" command to "crop"
a header or footer, the "wc" command to get basic text statistics, "grep" to
search the text for things you are interested in, the "tr" command to clean
a text and prepare it for analysis by removing punctuation, capital letters,
etc. and then the sort and uniq commands (covered in earlier Profhacker
posts
hereand
here) to get word frequencies.

This posting on pattern
matching taught me some great trips on how to use the "grep" command when
you have a handwritten document with difficult to read words that you can
only make out a few letters from. It also shows you how to color matched
patterns that you have searched for with "egrep" and how to use "fgrep" to
isolate words in a text that are not found in the dictionary. This is handy
when you are looking for unusual terms, proper nouns, or potential mistakes
in Opical Character Recognition. The posting also shows you how to use the "ptx"
(permuted term index) command, which I had never heard of, to quickly create
a concordance from a text.

This posting is more
advanced and requires some scripting. Turkel often uses the Python
programming language in his earlier postings but in all of these postings he
uses "BASH scripts" which are really just little sequences of regular
commands you can issue on the command line (in the
Bash shell) with some added flow control and logic
to handle repetition etc.

In this posting Turkel
uses "wget" to download a batch of files, the "split" command to split a
large file into smaller ones and a simple web indexing package called
"swish-e" to build an index from your source and make searching it easier.

Building on the last
posting, we now work with the java-based Stanford Language Processing
Software, and Turkel shows us how to find a list of potential people,
places, and organizations in our text source.

This posting shows how
you can use the free Tessecract OCR software on the command line using an
example of some typed correspondence from the early 20th century. Another
great section in this posting is how to do "fuzzy match" search of a text
using tre-agrep (I had trouble getting this to work on OS X, so try it in
the VirtualBox Linux install instead).

We have talked a bit
about working with PDFs on the command line here before. See, for example,
Lincoln’s post on
fixing PDFs using pdftk. This post by Turkel
offers an introduction to a broader range of command line utilities for PDF,
including "xpdf", "pdftk", "pdfimages" and "pdftotext" for the extraction of
text and images from PDFs and the creation of new PDFs with imagemagick’s
"convert" tool.

Educause and the New Media Consortium have released
the
2011 Horizon Report, an annual study of emerging
issues in technology in higher education. The issues that are seen as likely
to have great impact:

Over the next year: e-books and mobile
devices.

From two to three years out: augmented reality
and game-based learning.

From four to five years out: gesture-based
computing and learning analytics.

An Absolute Must Read for Educators
One of the most exciting things I took away from the 2010 AAA Annual Meetings in
San Francisco is a hard copy handout entitled "Expanding Your Classroom with
Video Technology and Social Media," by Mark Holtzblatt and Norbert Tschakert.
Mark later sent me a copy of this handout and permission to serve it up to you
at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/Video-Expanding_Your_Classroom_CTLA_2010.pdf

This is an exciting listing to over 100 video clips and full-feature videos
that might be excellent resources for your courses, for your research, and for
your scholarship in general. Included are videos on resources and useful tips
for video projects as well as free online communication tools.

My thanks to Professors Holtzblatt and Tschakert for this tremendous body of
work that they are now sharing with us

The aim of the Innovation 20/20 Series is to
showcase teaching innovations in the College of Education, and share ideas
about how the “Big I” and “little i” innovations are taking place at the
largest College of Education in the nation. Recognizing how important a
commodity time is in our lives, each session consists of a focused
presentation of only 20 minutes sharing a specific innovation, followed by
20 minutes of discussion and interactive engagement with the topic. If your
schedule does not allow to be present during the talks, please visit the
links below to view the video archive of the presentations.

November 1, 2012 Respondus message from Richard Campbell

Is the student taking your class the same one who is taking your exams??

One of the first Business School Deans to work at a standing desk was Harvey
Wagner when he became Dean of the business school at the University of North
Carolina back in the 1960s. Prior to that Harvey was a Stanford University
professor and author of one of the first books in Operations Research in the
early days of OR. Harvey was one of my OR professors. He was a good teacher with
a great technical brain, but I cannot imagine that he was a very good dean. He
eventually wrote five books and over 60 technical articles in OR and management
science.

While Harvey stood at his own desk as a Dean at UNC his office visitors also
had to stand. It was rumored that Harvey liked this because meetings were
shorter when people were not comfortably seated.

During my last week of being
mostly disconnected at a conferencein France, I
ran into one big challenge: my knowledge of French is limited, and usually
involves dictionary-heavy translation of text, not everyday conversation or
quickly reading for comprehension and navigation. I relied heavily on
phrases picked up from travel guides before my trip. Most street signs were
immediately comprehensible: other documents, like menus, descriptions on
products at the pharmacy, or signs on art, took much more work.

Throughout the trip, I found myself wishing for
better technical solutions to the problem of translation. I started relying
on a few apps to make the daily information processing easier.

Word Lens. The visual
translation app Word Lens, available on
Androidand
iOS, is beautiful. It works by taking a
picture and attempting to translate the words directly at they appear,
which can lead to some very strange interpretations but often is enough
to get the gist. It works as well on signs as conference paper titles in
printed programs–of course, it may have trouble with discipline-specific
terms. It can even translate powerpoint signs if they’re close and clear
enough and the font isn’t too small.

Google Translate. There are
several rival apps for translation, but Google’s (web,
iOS,
Android) works well for already-digital texts
or quickly typed in work and ultimately is the most powerful solution
I’ve seen. It requires an active Internet connection, so it isn’t so
great on the go, and it can be tedious to type in long phrases on a
smartphone for translation. This works best when the specifics really
matter.

A Pocket Phrasebook. Those of
you traveling without tech might rely on some old-fashioned solutions: a
phrasebook and a dictionary, whether downloaded or paper, may not be as
fast as Google or a translation app, but it’s often organized with
attention to terms a traveler needs to reference quickly.
Languageshas several options for download
(each for a fee) in-app.

Medical students can
earn academic creditat the University of
California at San Francisco for
editing content on Wikipedia. Fourth-year medical
students in a new class will be editing articles, adding images, reviewing
edits and adding citations to support unreferenced text. They will focus on
editing 80 frequently used articles that have low levels of quality.
Wikipedia is a widely used reference for health topics, but medical entries
can lack sources and have gaps in content.

“We’re recognizing the impact Wikipedia can have to educate patients and
health care providers across the globe, and want users to receive the most
accurate publicly available, sound medical information,” said Amin Azzam,
association clinical professor and instructor for the new class, in a news
release. The class will also teach students how to communicate with
consumers about health topics.

The class is a collaboration between the UCSF School
of Medicine and the Wiki Project Med Foundation.

Jensen Comment
I don't see why schools of accounting cannot do something like this for student
assignments. However, since accounting is so poorly posted, relative to
economics, finance, and medicine, to Wikipedia accounting students would
probably have to start new modules.

Most eBooks are still pretty boring as objects:
text, pictures, maybe a video or interactive visualization in a more
experimental work. But that landscape may be changing, thanks in part to the
number of cool free tools for
building interactive books. One of these
platforms,
inklewriter,has some great potential for use with
students in the classroom or for creating interactive stories or texts.

Last week, Inkle Studios released “Future Voices,”
a curated collection of stories produced with its interactive story
development tool. This slick iPad app features the tech behind
Frankenstein, an interactive adaptation of Mary
Shelley’s novel by Dave Morris. Play through any of these stories for a
while and you’ll see everything from straightforward choices of action to
complex moral dilemmas and experiments. You can also check out many
experiments on the web, includingEmily
Short’s Holography–she’s also written
some thoughts on inklewriter as a platform.

While
Inform 7 (as discussed last week) uses a parser
interface based on interpreting a broad range of user actions (get lamp,
open door, look at book, etc.), Inklewriter uses an interaction model
similar to ’80s
Choose Your Own Adventuregamebooks, which
recently came back into print and made the transition to eBooks. However, it
goes beyond any of the simple
page-shuffling modelsof those past books in part
because it can keep track of decisions and variables from the user’s
actions.

Inklewriter has a great
tutorial “story”
to introduce writers to the platform. The interface, shown below, is mostly
free of distractions and built around creating story nodes and choices:

March 11th saw the pre-release of my digital
project,Songs of the
Victorians, an archive of parlor and art song
settings of Victorian poems, and also a scholarly tool to facilitate
interdisciplinary music and poetry scholarship. I had been building it for
the last two years with the help of fellowships fromNINESand theScholars’ Lab,
and it was a great experience to finally make the site
public.

It was also a surprisingly challenging experience,
as I had to figure out how to make the site display properly on a wide
variety of browsers, operating systems, and iOS devices (iPad, iPod, etc.).

Before I jump in with details about the trials and
tribulations of testing website compatibility, I’ll first explain a little
more about my site and the programming and design challenges it presents. It
is a part of the final chapter of my dissertation on Victorian poetry and
music, and it will contain four songs: Michael William Balfe’s and Sir
Arthur Somervell’s settings of “Come into the Garden, Maud” (both based on
Alfred Lord Tennyson’s monodrama, Maud), Sir Arthur Sullivan’s version of
Adelaide Procter’s “A Lost Chord,” and Caroline Norton’s “Juanita,” although
for the limited release, it only includes “Juanita.” The site contains two
components for each work: an archive of high-resolution images of the first
edition printing with an audio file, and an article-length analysis of the
song’s interpretation of the poem, with playable excerpts of relevant
musical phrases to support the argument. When the song is played on either
component, each measure of the score is highlighted in time with the music
so that everyone, regardless of their ability to read music, can follow the
score and the thread of the argument.

To incorporate audio, I needed to use a
comparatively new feature of html, namely, the <audio> tag, which lets you
embed an audio file and player in a website. I was disappointed to discover
that no two browsers handled it in precisely the same way: Internet Explorer
won’t recognize it at all in versions 8 and earlier (and inexplicably won’t
render it in version 10), ios devices will only play the audio file if it is
triggered by a user event, and Firefox will only play ogg vorbis, not mp3
files.

Such compatibility difficulties are often
colloquially (and aptly) referred to as “browser hell.” I learned about some
of these problems from researching the <audio> tag as I was developing Songs
of the Victorians, but I learned most from an incredibly useful site for
testing website compatability:BrowserStack.

"MILLIONS OF LESSONS LEARNED ON ELECTRONIC NAPKINS," by Rick Lillie, AAA
Commons, January 2, 2013 ---
http://commons.aaahq.org/posts/6040b395eb
Most AAA Commons postings are only available to AAA members. However, this may
be one of the freebies

In addition to short summaries of leading presenters, you may want to just
note what speakers were given the great honor of speaking at plenary sessions.
You can then do Google and other searches on these speakers.

Here at ProfHacker, we’ve written several posts
over the years about cloud computing and collaboration. Most of our focus
has been on GoogleDocs and collaborative authorship (see my “GoogleDocs
and Collaboration in the Classroom,” for example).

Last week, Microsoft announced
Office 365 University, a cloud-based service to be
made available to students, faculty, and staff at colleges and universities.
The company says that the service is scheduled to become “[a]vailable in the
first quarter of 2013,” and will be free for higher ed users who have
purchased
Office University 2010 or
Office University for Mac 2011. (However, later in
that same announcement a price of $1.67 per month is specified, which is
still pretty good, but not as good as free).

Q:
I have been tasked with reviewing and updating our firm’s website content,
and I want to go about it as efficiently as possible. Can you help me get
started?

A:
I find that I can review content better on a printed page with pencil in
hand. Adobe Acrobat Standard X ($139) provides the ability to produce a
single document containing your entire website. To use this feature, from
the Acrobat X menu, select Create, Create PDF from
Web Page, and enter the website’s URL (URL is an acronym for
uniform resource locator, which is the site’s home page web address) in the
URL box. Click the Capture Multiple Levels
button, select the Get entire site radio button, and then
click Create

Many Mac users have hidden files located on their
computers that they might not know about. ShowOrHide is a utility designed
to locate invisible files and folders so that users will have more knowledge
about such items. This program is compatible with computers running Mac OS X
10.5 or later.

For all those who have wrestled with creating
charts and diagrams in word processors, the Google Chrome application
Lucidchart may be a long-awaited answer. Users can start using the intuitive
drag-and-drop interface right away, although a free signup is required to
save diagrams. By sharing a link with coworkers, project collaborators can
work on the same diagram at the same time. This application is compatible
with all computers running Google Chrome.

“R is really important to the point that it’s hard
to overvalue it,” said Daryl Pregibon, a research scientist at Google, which
uses the software widely. “It allows statisticians to do very intricate and
complicated analyses without knowing the blood and guts of computing systems.”
Ashley Vance, "Data Analysts Captivated by R’s Power," The New York Times,
January 6, 2009 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/technology/business-computing/07program.html?_r=0

Well, it would seem we
have identified the week in which being a big data wonk became
cool. After all, there’s Nate Silver—the Electoral College
Oracle—being feted on The Daily Show and across the Web
for collecting polling data and then massaging it with a clever
algorithm. Now everyone wants to hang out with the skinny, kinda
nervous dude who knows his way around R. (R? Look it up. You’ll
need thisfor cocktail
parties from here on out.)

If you don’t have time to
attend the soon-to-be-planned Nate Silver’s Datapalooza, you can
still have a crack at becoming the big data star around the
office. That’s because the data fiends in Silicon Valley have
been hard at work creating software that lets mere mortals run
complex information analysis jobs. Some of the best examples of
this type of technology can be seen at theAlteryx
Analytics Gallery,
where you can find ready-made apps for poring over data ranging
from census figures to how a merger between two companies may
play out.

Alteryx’s main business
revolves around selling software that helps people submit big
data sets and then choose from a menu of analytical operations
to perform on the information. The idea is to remove some of the
coding grunt work that has surrounded data analysis jobs for
decades. “This has been the world of statisticians and Ph.D.s
and not the people on the front lines trying to make good
business decisions,” says George Mathew, the president and chief
operating officer at Alteryx. “We wanted to change that.”

Customers using Alteryx’s
software will find some huge, preloaded data sets like
information from the 2010 Census and marketing services company
Experian’s consumer profiling data. Then you can literally drag
and drop analysis functions such as regression models from a
menu to apply them to the data and receive a pretty report at
the end. Companies can, of course, supply their own data, making
it possible for, say, an executive at a retailer to take data
from 900 million point of sale transactions, 2.5 million loyalty
cards, and 500,000 Likes on Facebook
(FB)and try to determine what
the value of Facebook Likes might be on a given store.

The Analytics Gallery is a
spot where people can find prepackaged data analytics apps and
have some fun poking around on the information. Ahead of the
presidential election, for example, there were models available
that let you see how particular zip codes might vote based on
polling numbers and things like census data. The
Presidential Election Apppredicted Obama’s win with
Silver-like accuracy.

One of the newer apps has been
tuned for Facebook employees trying to cash in on the company’s
initial public offering. It helps you find the ideal house
based on how many Facebook shares you’re willing to sell, how
close you want to live to the company headquarters, and the
usual bedrooms and bathrooms desired.

Alteryx’s Mathew hopes these
types of apps will prove that more people can become data
analysis whizzes if they’re given the right tools. He says there
are 200,000 so-called data scientists in the world, who
regularly command more than $200,000 per year in salary. These
are your Nate Silvers. Then, there are 2.5 million people in the
workforce that have enough statistics, business, and math
knowledge to do some serious data crunching with a bit of
technological help. “I think there’s a tremendous arbitrage
opportunity here,” Mathew says.

Hear that, Silver?

Jensen Comment
To my knowledge, Nate Silver is not a collector of raw data. He is a data
aggregator using databases collected by others. As such he's totally dependent
upon the depth and quality of data points in those databases. He's best known
for aggregating baseball and political poll databases ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nate_Silver

Insider Trading Issues
Another issue is whether Nate's findings are self-serving in some way in the
sense that players fare better or worse as a result of Nate's predictions. This
seems to be less likely in baseball than in political polls. There are
various degrees of insider trading in life. To the extent that inside
players of a game can alter the databases upon with aggregators like Nate
depend, the more dysfunctional highly publicized predictions such as those of
Nate Silver become.

Herein lies Nate's problem.
Baseball databases are pretty independent, reliable, and very deep about
collecting almost everything about professional baseball games apart from
personal data of players such as most medical data and other very personal data
on players and managers. Players cannot fudge most baseball statistics in a
self-serving way.

Dear Bob, I did not know any
of this background, so
thank you for putting things
into clear perspective.

One technical point (that
does not answer your
criticisms totally) is that
the Bayes mechanism of using
likelihood p(signal|event)
to find p(event|signal) is
that built-in bias in the
signal is accounted for
logically in determining
just how strong it is.

I didn’t forward the message
to AECM because I did not
think the crowd is keen for
more Bayesian spruiking from
me, and because I did not
know too much about this
Silver man. Your points make
it clear that caution was
justified.

I did know that you would be
a good barometer though!

One thing I will say on
another point, accounting as
a discipline does not
properly understand Bayes
theorem, despite the amount
of Bayesian
argument/modelling. This is
remarkable given that
accounting is a signalling
discipline. Foster was right
when he started his Fin Stmt
Analysis text with Ch.1 on
Bayes and the value of info.
I am just finishing up a
couple of papers on this, so
will send soon.

Jensen Comment
f there is more cheating in online courses, the fault lies with the internal
controls of the online system rather than the difference between online versus
onsite systems per se. Cheating is largely the fault of the online and
onsite instructors and their universities. There are controls (not costless) to
reduce online cheating to levels below those of onsite courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#OnlineOffCampus
For example, observing a student taking an online test can be more one-on-one
observation with the proper Webcam procedures or with hiring the Village Vicar
to or a Sylvan Systems to proctor the examination.

Have you ever wanted to create a bundle of links to
share with friends, colleagues, and others with simpatico interests?
Bundlenut makes this possible with just a few easy steps. Visitors can use
the site to create a bundle of links and give the bundle a title. There's a
"bundle browser" as well, and it's easy to share them. Some of the sample
bundles on the site include "Food from Scratch," "West Coast Road Trip
Itinerary," and "Mrs. Comstock's 11th Grade Reading List." This version is
compatible with all operating systems.

Have you ever wanted to see a website in 3D? Well,
this is now possible with Tilt3D 1.0.1. Created by Victor Porof, the tool is
"layers each node based on the nesting in the tree, creating stacks of
elements, each having a corresponding depth and being textured according to
the webpage rendering." It's a pretty fun little tool and it is compatible
with all operating systems running Mozilla Firefox.

OptimumCS-Pro
This app finds the lens settings that minimize the blurring caused by
defocus and diffraction, so that you can get the sharpest images from your
D.S.L.R. that the laws of optics will allow. For iPhone, $7. (www.georgedouvos.com)

YouVisit
This app offers prospective students GPS-guided tours of college campuses
and academic programs. Offers news, weather, photos and contact info for
each college. Free for iPhone/Android. (www.youvisit.com)

SproutConverter You know all those distorted and blank sections on
your home video tapes that remain after you transfer them to your computer?
SproutConverter gets rid of them automatically. Import your videos to your
computer using whatever device you choose, then drag and drop. $30, for Mac.
(www.gearsprout.com.)

Addressgate
Ever wanted to contact a neighbor you don’t know? Sign up to this
specialized social network with your home address, then communicate with
neighbors privately, or view/post neighborhoodwide alerts, news and events.
Free. (www.addressgate.com)

Novatel MiFi
4620L Mobile Hotspot No larger than a stack of cards, this
self-powered pocket 4G WiFi hot spot has an interactive OLED screen and
five-hour battery life. Connects up to 10 Wi-Fi devices. $50 with two-year
Verizon contract. (www.verizonwireless.com/verizon-jetpack-mifi-4620l.shtml)

FlightView
This app offers push alerts on flight status changes, visibility into
nationwide airport delays, directions to the airport and social integration
for sharing your flight’s status with the people picking you up from the
airport. (j.mp/SEUePI)

YouMail
Visual voice mail on steroids. Customized greetings, smart and social caller
ID, call blocking and the ability to save your messages. Free. For Android,
iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Phone. (Voice mail transcription services,
performed by people instead of software, is available for $5 to $40 a month.
(www.youmail.com)

Continued in article

Update on Portable Scanning

August 22, 2012 message from Scott Bonacker

I deleted the extraneous
material from this marketing email - it describes a scanner that could be
useful for onsite work like I do - and maybe someone else as well – scan
student papers at your desk at the front of the room?

Scott Bonacker CPA - McCullough and Associates LLC - Springfield, MO

1. A SCANNER THAT GIVES DUPLEX A WHOLE NEW MEANING

The secret to success in the technology world is to solve a problem. Here's
one. Mobile scanners can handle documents, but not bound materials. Wand
scanners can handle bound materials but not documents. You can "scan"
anything by snapping a photo with your smartphone, but positioning your
smartphone perfectly wastes time, the lower quality makes optical character
recognition more challenging, and you risk looking dorky. A new scanner
attempts to solve this problem.

The MobileScan Pro 100 consist of two components -- a dock and a wand
scanner with an LCD display. When the scanner is docked, it functions like a
typical sheet-fed simplex scanner with speeds of up to 10 pages per minute
in black and white (it can also scan in color).

However, you can detach the scanner from the dock, thus transforming it into
a wand scanner for bound materials not to mention fabric and other items
that you cannot feed.

Other Notable Features

The entire docked unit measures 12.4 x 2 x 1.7 inches and weighs 12.6
ounces. You can power it with the included USB cable or a battery (the
battery resides inside the scanner component). The LCD screen enables you to
adjust settings without the need for a computer.

The MobileScan Pro 100 scans at 300, 600, or 900 dpi, and saves your
documents in JPEG or PDF format via the bundled PageManager 9 software. You
can save scans to an attached computer or to the included 4 GB microUSB card
that resides inside the scanner. The scanner can encrypt your scans on the
microUSB card for security in the event of loss or theft.

What is "kwout"? Basically, it's a tiny application
that allows users to "quote" a part of a web page as an image with an image
map. It is easy to use, as all users have to do is add the kwout bookmarklet
to their favorite browser. Visitors can then grab a screenshot, cut out the
area of inte

The mail is still
coming in about my review of Barnes & Noble’s latest e-book reader, the
Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight.

Very little of the
mail is actually about the reader, though. Most of it challenges the
statements I made when I characterized the state of the e-book world right
now.

Here’s a summary —
and a few clarifications.

• What I wrote:
“When you buy an e-reader, you’re committing to that one company’s catalog
of books forever, because their book formats are mutually incompatible.”

Sample reader
pushback: “Why do you write about things you don’t know anything about?
Apparently, you haven’t heard of the free app called Calibre. It converts
any e-book format into any other format. If I want to switch from a Kindle
to a Nook, I just let Calibre convert my current Kindle library. It’s that
simple.”

My reply: It’s
actually not, for one towering reason: Calibre can’t convert copy-protected
books. It doesn’t even try. And that rules out most of the books people want
to read these days: best sellers. Current, commercial fiction and
nonfiction. Books by people who are still alive.

I mean, if all you
want to read is old, expired-copyright books like “Moby Dick” and “Little
Women,” then — great! You don’t need Calibre at all, because these books are
available free online in any format you like (or in formats that any reader
can display, like text files or PDF files).

But when it comes to
more recent books, my statement still stands. If you buy a bunch of modern
books for the Nook and then one day switch to the Kindle, you’ll have to
kiss your entire investment goodbye.

• What I wrote:
“You can’t read a Kindle book on a Nook, or a Nook book on a Sony Reader, or
a Sony book on an iPad.”

Sample reader
pushback: “Your remark about not being able to read various book types on
rival readers is disingenuous at best. I can read all of my Kindle books and
all of my Nook books on my laptop or my iPad, thanks to reader apps made by
those companies.”

My reply: Yes,
that’s true. There are Kindle and Nook reading apps for tablets, phones and
computers, so that you can read your purchased books without actually owning
an e-book reader at all!

To be technically
complete, therefore, I could have written this: “You can’t read a Kindle
book on a Nook or Sony Reader, or a Nook book on a Sony Reader or Kindle, or
a Sony book on an iPad, Kindle or Nook, or an iBooks book on a Nook, Kindle
or Sony Reader. With a special app, you can read a Kindle book or Nook book
on an iPad, laptop, iPhone, iPod Touch or Android phone.”

But my point was
not to create a Wikipedia entry on e-book compatibility. I was just trying
to make the point that if you are thinking of buying a dedicated e-book
reader — and since this was a review of an e-book reader, I think that’s a
reasonable assumption — then you’ll be locked into books from its
manufacturer.

• What I wrote:
“Once you buy the gadget, you’ve just married its company forever. If you
ever want to change brands, you have to give up all the books you’ve ever
bought.”

Sample reader
pushback: “Your article contains an error. If you buy a Nook, you are not
tied to Barnes & Noble’s bookstore. They use the ePub format, and accept the
Adobe Digital Editions DRM [copy-protection] scheme, so you can buy books
from a number of vendors. I have purchased books from B&N as well as Kobo,
the Sony bookstore, and a couple other sites.”

My reply: I’ve
always known that the Sony, Nook and Kobo readers all read standard ePub
files. But it was my impression that, here again, the only books you can
exchange freely among readers are the old, public-domain ones — not the
copy-protected modern best sellers that most people are interested in.

It appears that I’m
wrong. With some effort, you can, in fact, move copy-protected books among
those three e-book readers. When I asked that reader how he does it, he sent
along the instructions:

Say I bought
“My Man Jeeves” from Kobo. I copy it to my Kobo e-reader. Now, to copy
it to my Sony reader, I must manually download the acsm file that
controls my license for this book. Kobo allows this, but not through
their desktop application — only on their Web site. I simply use my Kobo
account credentials to log on to the site. I go to “My library.” Beside
each of my purchases is a Download button (it may be called “Adobe DRM
ePub/PDF”). I click this button, and the acsm file is downloaded.

Now I “open”
the acsm file using the Sony Reader desktop application. (On Windows, I
do that by right-clicking the file, then selecting “Open with Sony
eReader.”) My book is now copied-downloaded into my Sony Reader desktop
app. I can then connect my Sony reader by its cable to my PC to copy
that book as usual.

Wow. I’m not entirely
convinced that average consumers would be willing, or even able, to wade
through all of that for every book in their libraries.

But technically, I
was wrong, and you’re right. If you’re technically adept, you can transfer
your purchased books among Nook, Sony and Kobo readers — and any others that
offer ePub compatibility.

The only big-name
reader that doesn’t is the Kindle. Once you buy a Kindle book, you really
are stuck with Kindles and Kindle reading apps forever.

Whispersyncis Amazon's new
feature that allows for Kindle e-books and Audible
audiobooks to sync up. This makes perfect sense, as
Amazon owns Audible, and can leverage common platforms
and accounts to provide a seamless reading experience
across e-book and audiobook reading methods.

The idea is that we can get more reading done if we can
easily move between platforms, listening to our books
while multitasking (driving, exercising, cleaning etc.),
and then reading the e-book during those times in which
it is rude to have earbuds stuck in our ears.

I love the option of switching back and forth between
audio and e-paper (or paper). Most of my reading is done
via my ears, but most of my pleasure reading comes
through my eyeballs.

The genius of syncing up the e-book and the audiobook is
that the technology gives to us the thing that is most
valuable - more time to read.

All of us would read more books if we had more time to
read.

By
syncing a book across platforms, including a Kindle
smart phone app, a dedicated Kindle reader, and the
audio version, we can read more by reading in smaller
chunks. We can get a bit of reading done whenever we
have a few minutes. And then we can transition to longer
stretches of pleasure reading with our dedicated Kindle
reader.

Whisperync is a
terrific concept, but in execution Amazon has fallen a
bit short. I'm hoping that we are in the early days of
cross-method / cross-platform book syncing - and that
Amazon will rapidly evolve this service.

3 ideas for Whispersync:

1. Allow Kindle Book Purchases via Audible:
The way it works now is that you purchase the "Whispersync
Voice-Ready" Kindle book first
from Amazon, and then you are given the option to buy
the audiobook. For example, you can buy the Kindle
edition ofKeynes Hayek: The Clash that Defined Modern
Economics for $9.55. You
are then given the option of buying the Audible audio
version for $7.95. On Audible, this book costs $19.59 or
1 credit for members. There is no way to go the other
way, to buy the audiobook from Audible and add on the
Kindle book. Most audiobook shoppers get our audiobooks
from Audible, not from Amazon. For audiobook fans, the
audiobook is the primary means of reading. The e-book is
an "add on." By requiring Whispersync purchases to go
through the Amazon.com website, Amazon is making it more
difficult to find and purchase books.

2. Bundle Kindle Books in with Audible Credits:
The bigger problem with the Amazon/Kindle centric
Whispersync system is that the program does not work
well for Audible subscribers. I'm a longtime
Audible Platinum subscriber,
a program that gives me 24 books (really credits) for
$229.50. This works out to $9.56 a book. The Whispersync
program is a bad deal for me (and all Platinum
subscribers), as the typical cost of a book would jump
from under $10 bucks (for the audio version) to around
$18 bucks. What Audible should do is come out with a
"super credit" - one that buys both the audio and the
Kindle version of the book. I would pay $12 a super
credit, as having the book in both formats is valuable,
but not so valuable that I want to double pay for the
book. This seems like a good deal for the authors, the
publishers, and Amazon - as delivering the digital audio
and e-book file does not cost Amazon or the publishers
anything extra. My guess is that making a dual format
book affordable would drive book sales.

3. Introduce A Dedicated AudioBook Device:
The idea of reading audiobook and e-books, with
everything seamless syncing, is wonderful in theory. In
reality, the hardware makes syncing across audio/e-book
formats somewhat challenging. I listen to my audiobooks
books on an iPod Nano. Since the Nano is not WiFi
enabled syncing is impossible. Syncing only works when
listening to the book on an iPhone, or a Kindle device.
Amazon should come out with a dedicated audiobook
reader. Call it the Kindle Spark, or the
Kindle Ember. A small device that works well for
exercising, and that is WiFi enabled so syncing works.
A small screen would even allow for Kindle reading, and
for purchases of digital books right from the device.

I am writing this paragraph on an iPhone. But I am
not typing it on the phone's virtual keyboard. I am dictating it using a
little-known feature that allows you to employ your voice, instead of your
fingers, wherever text entry is possible on the device.

So, on the suspicion that dictation on smartphones
might prove useful for others as well, I've been testing it heavily over the
past week. I used a top phone with Google's Android software, the Samsung
Galaxy Nexus, and an Apple iPhone 4S. In general, I found that, while
dictation could occasionally fail badly, it worked surprisingly well in a
wide variety of environments and applications.

On both leading smartphone platforms, I found that
relatively short dictation—such as emails, texts, tweets, Facebook posts and
notes—was at least as accurate, and often more, as typing on a glass screen.
It was better in quiet environments, but did OK even in most noisy places
like grocery stores, coffee shops and carwashes. It was also faster, since,
as long as you don't have to correct numerous errors, speaking is usually
faster than typing on glass.

For this review, I am not mainly referring to Siri,
the widely publicized, voice-controlled feature on the new iPhones, which
can do things like tell you the weather, or stock prices. Nor am I
discussing the "voice actions" on Android, which can perform Web searches
and other tasks. Both can also help with some text dictation. I concentrated
on a much simpler feature of both platforms: a small microphone key that's
included right in the phones' on-screen keyboards.

Android phones have had this microphone key for a
couple of years, and Apple added it to the latest iPhone, the 4S, last fall,
and to the new iPad, when it came out last month. But I'm guessing that many
users of these phones either haven't used this special key, or haven't even
noticed it.

While the microphone keys work a bit differently on
the two platforms, they are basically similar. When the keyboard appears,
ready for you to type, you can instead hit the microphone key and simply
dictate what you want to say. The phones then send your spoken words to a
remote server, which rapidly translates them into text and sends them back
to the phone's screen. If corrections are needed, you make them by typing,
though both platforms make this easier by indicating the likeliest errors,
and suggesting alternatives.

A couple of caveats are in order. I didn't compare
dictation to typing on a phone with physical keys, whose devotees are often
speedy and accurate. Instead, I thought the apt comparison was with a
virtual keyboard, which is becoming the norm on phones, but is still a
source of frustration for many users. [PTECHjump1]

But Android was more reliable.

I also didn't try dictating a long document, like
this column, because phones are rarely used for lengthy composing.

I found that both platforms' dictation systems
worked well enough for me to recommend them. In case after case, both phones
got it right, or close enough to require little correcting.

But there are differences. Android has an advantage
in that, in the newest version of its operating system, it displays the
dictated text almost in real time, lagging just slightly behind your spoken
words. On the iPhone, the system only reveals its rendering of your
dictation after you've tapped on a "Done" button.

Android's dictation system also supports many more
languages than Apple's—40 languages and dialects, including Spanish,
Chinese, Arabic and Hebrew. On the iPhone, only English, French and German
are currently supported, though Apple says Chinese, Korean, Italian, and
Spanish will be added later this year.

However, I found the iPhone 4S worked better than
the Galaxy Nexus in noisier environments. For instance, in a crowded
shopping-mall food court, while neither phone was perfect, the iPhone
understood me to say: "I am dictating this email from the very noisy Court
at Montgomery Mall on the iPhone"—missing only the word "food" and
capitalizing "Court." The Android phone mangled a very similar sentence as:
"I am dictating this email on droid phone from the bearing noise for it
montgomery mall."

In death, as in life, people don't always leave
their papers in order. Letters, manuscripts, and other pieces of evidence
wind up scattered among different archives, leading researchers on a paper
chase as they try to hunt down what they need for their work.

"It can be hugely frustrating—especially when you
make a journey cross-country to an archive, and then discover the piece you
really wanted must be somewhere else (or, God forbid, rotting away in a
landfill)," says Robert Townsend, deputy director of the American Historical
Association, in an e-mail interview. Chasing after distributed historical
records is so common that "any historian who has not suffered from that
problem can't be working very hard," he wrote.

The Internet has made the hunt easier, as more
archives post finding aids for their collections online. "Scholars have at
least gotten to the point where they can search over the Internet for these
materials," says Daniel V. Pitti, the associate director of the Institute
for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, or IATH, at the University of
Virginia. But what he calls "hunting and gathering" persists for
document-seekers, who "a priori have to have some idea, some hunch, of where
to go, because the access systems are distinct and not integrated any way."

Now imagine a central clearinghouse for those
records, an online hub researchers could consult to find archival materials.

That vision drives a project of Mr. Pitti's called
the Social Networks and Archival Context Project, or SNAC. It's a
collaboration between researchers and developers at IATH, the University of
California at Berkeley's School of Information, and the California Digital
Library. The project recently finished its pilot stage with the help of a
grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Another grant, from
the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will support the project through another
two years as it adds millions more records and begins beta testing with
researchers.

Some people have already found the prototype, which
is up and running although not yet widely promoted. The site allows visitors
to search for the names of individuals, corporate entities, or families to
find "archival context records" for them.

"So if I'm interested in a particular person," Mr.
Pitti says, "I can find where all the records are that would be required to
understand them." For instance, a search for Robert Oppenheimer turns up a
link to a collection of the physicist's papers housed at the Library of
Congress, plus links to other collections in which he is referenced, a
biographical timeline, and a list of occupations and subjects related to his
life and work.

A researcher can explore a person's social and
cultural environment with SNAC's radial-graph feature. It creates a web,
which can be manipulated, of a subject's connections as revealed in archival
records. The radial graph of Oppenheimer's network, for instance, includes
George Kennan, Linus Pauling, Bertrand Russell, and Albert Schweitzer, among
many other names represented as nodes on the graph.

Not yet fully developed, the radial-graph feature
supports one of the project's main goals: to visualize the social networks
within which archival records were created. "What you're trying to do is put
together the puzzle, the fabric of someone's life, the people that
influenced them and the people they influenced," Mr. Pitti says. "One could
certainly, in an analog context, piece this together, but it would take
years and years of work. What we're demonstrating is that we can go out
there and gather all that information and present it to you, which would
liberate scholars." Connecting archival data can reveal patterns of
association hidden in disparate collections.

Data Quality Important

To work well, SNAC requires good data. Its first
phase drew on thousands of finding aids—encoded with a standard known as
Encoded Archival Description, or EAD—from the Library of Congress, the
Northwest Digital Archives, the Online Archive of California, and Virginia
Heritage. A newer standard for encoding archival information, referred to as
EAC-CPF, for Encoded Archival Context-Corporate Bodies, Persons, and
Families, was then applied to those records, making them easier to find and
connect.

Archives are idiosyncratic, and it's not always
easy to tell whether a name refers to a particular individual or to
different people with identical or similar names. One of Mr. Pitti's main
collaborators is Ray R. Larson, a professor in the School of Information at
the University of California at Berkeley. He concentrates on what Mr. Pitti
calls the "matching and merging" required to winnow out duplicate names,
find variants of the same name, and so on. To do that Mr. Larson has tested
several approaches, including machine learning, in which a computer is
programmed to recognize, for example, common variations in spelling.

The job is about to get much tougher, though,
because SNAC is about to get much bigger. As part of the second phase of the
project, supported by the Mellon grant, 13 state and regional archival
consortia and more than 35 university and national repositories in the
United States, Britain, and France will contribute records. The British
Library "is giving me 300,000 names associated with their manuscript
collections," going back to before the Christian era, says Mr. Pitti.

The project will also ingest as many as 2 million
standardized bibliographic records, in the widely used MARC format, from the
online OCLC collaboration in which libraries exchange research and
cataloging information. OCLC has its own centralized archival search
function, called ArchiveGrid; Mr. Pitti describes it as complementary to
SNAC. Unlike SNAC, though, "ArchiveGrid does not foreground the
biographical-historical data, nor does it reveal the social networks that
interrelate the archival resources," he says.

Of all the confusing technology terms used in
consumer marketing today, perhaps the most opaque is "4G," used to describe
a new, much faster generation of cellular data on smartphones, tablets and
other devices. It sounds simple, but there are many varieties of 4G and
conflicting claims.

AT&T T -0.30% claims "The nation's largest 4G
network," and T-Mobile says it has "America's largest 4G network." Verizon
Wireless boasts "America's fastest 4G network," and Sprint S -0.17% says it
had the first 4G network.

Yet the technology used by T-Mobile, and mostly
comprising AT&T's 4G network, isn't considered "real" 4G at all by some
critics, and the one used by Sprint has proven to be a dead end and is being
abandoned. The flavor being used by Verizon is now being adopted by its
rivals, but won't be interoperable among them.

It's a headache for consumers to grasp. So here's a
simplified explainer to some of the most common questions, based on
interviews with top technical officials at all four major U.S. wireless
carriers.

What is 4G?

It's the fourth and latest generation technology
for data access over cellular networks. It's faster and can give networks
more capacity than the 3G networks still on most phones. There's a technical
definition, set by a United Nations agency in Europe, and a marketing
definition, which is looser, but more relevant to most consumers.

Who needs 4G?

It's mostly for people with smartphones, tablets
and laptops who often need fast data speeds for Web browsing, app use and
email when they're out of the range of Wi-Fi networks. It can give you the
same or greater data speeds as home or office Wi-Fi when you're in a taxi.
In hotels and airports, it's often faster than public Wi-Fi networks.

How does 4G differ from another term
being advertised, 'LTE'?

LTE, which stands for "Long Term Evolution," is the
fastest, most consistent variety of 4G, and the one most technical experts
feel hews most closely to the technical standard set by the U.N. In the
U.S., it has primarily been deployed by Verizon, which offers it in over 200
markets. AT&T has begun deploying it, offering LTE in 28 markets so far.
Sprint and T-Mobile are pivoting to LTE, though they have no cities covered
by it yet.

What are these other versions of
4G?

Sprint uses a technology called WiMax. T-Mobile and
AT&T deployed a technology called HSPA+, a faster version of 3G that they
relabeled as 4G, and which many technical critics regard as a "faux 4G."
Sprint will begin switching to LTE later this year, and T-Mobile in 2013.

How fast is 4G?

Claims vary and performance depends upon the type
of device, location, and time. In my tests, 4G phones, tablets and data
modems for laptops typically deliver from three to 20 times the download
speeds of 3G devices. The speed king is LTE. The LTE devices I've used have
typically averaged download speeds of between 10 and 20 megabits per second,
with frequent instances of over 30 megabits per second. The other forms of
4G have generally produced download speeds well under 10 mbps in my tests.
But all of these are better than 3G, which in my tests on all networks and
many devices, averages download speeds of under 2 mbps. The Digital Solution

How does LTE compare with common wired
home Internet speeds?

Although it is wireless, LTE is often faster than
most Americans' wired home Internet service. According to Akamai, a large
Internet company, the average broadband speed in the U.S. in the third
quarter of 2011 was a mere 6.1 mbps.

How does LTE compare with Wi-Fi?

Wi-Fi is usually a wireless broadcast of a wired
Internet service, so, if the average U.S. broadband speed is 6.1 mbps,
that's around what the average Wi-Fi speed is. But, in public places, the
shared Wi-Fi is often much, much slower than LTE. In tests I did this week
at Dulles Airport near Washington, and at a hotel outside Boston, the public
Wi-Fi networks delivered well under 1 mbps on the new iPad. But the Verizon
LTE cellular network on the iPad averaged over 32 mbps in both places.

Meet the Ed-Tech
Start-Ups

It's a golden age for educational-technology
start-ups. The past three years have seen a spike in venture-capital
investment in upstart companies, many founded by entrepreneurs just out of
college. Last month The Chronicle outlined the trend ("A
Boom Time for Education Start-Ups"), but we wanted
to dig deeper.

Below are short features on three such companies,
focusing on the problems they hope to solve and the challenges they face in
selling their unusual ideas. To get a sense of the emerging field, we've
included a
list of a dozen other start-upscompeting for a
piece of the action.

Pooja Sankar may eliminate
the need for professors to hold office hours, or to endlessly respond to
student questions by e-mail.

Ms. Sankar, a recent
graduate of Stanford University's M.B.A. program, leads a start-up focused
on finding a better way for college students to ask questions about course
materials and assignments online. Her company, Piazza, has built an online
study hall where professors and teaching assistants can easily monitor
questions and encourage students who understand the material to help their
peers.

At first blush, the service seems unnecessary.
Students can already e-mail questions to professors or fellow students, and
most colleges already own course-management systems like Blackboard that
include discussion features. But Ms. Sankar feels that such options are
clunky. She says professors are finding that Piazza can save them hours each
week by allowing them to post answers to a single online forum rather than
handle a scattershot of student e-mails.

Piazza is a Web site that refreshes with updates as
new questions or answers come in. Professors simply set up a free discussion
area for their course on the service at the beginning of the term and invite
their students to set up free accounts to participate. Ms. Sankar says that
students typically keep Piazza open on their screens as they work on
homework, often staying on the site for hours at a time.

Ms. Sankar, who is 31, was inspired to create the
service based on her own experience as an undergraduate in India, where she
studied at the highly selective Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur.
She says she was a shy student, and one of only three women majoring in
computer science, so she often found herself watching from the wings as more
social students collaborated on homework assignments. She felt there had to
be a way to recreate a study hall online, in a way that made it easy for shy
students to ask questions anonymously.

After graduating, she got a master's degree in
computer science at the University of Maryland at College Park, and then
worked as an engineer for Facebook and other companies for a few years. When
she decided to head to Stanford to study business, she was sure she would
not try to start a company of her own, since she found the prospect "too
scary." But a course on entrepreneurship made her realize that the path to a
company was simply a series of "baby steps," and that she wanted to bring
her vision of a better "question-and-answer platform" to life.

She wrote the original version of Piazza herself,
after teaching herself the programming language Ruby on Rails from a book.
By the time she first sought investors, she already had hundreds of students
using the service. She raised an initial round of $1.5-million last year
from the venture-capital firm Sequoia Capital, and raised an additional
$6-million from investors in November.

As of yet, the site has no plans to generate
revenue—the service is free and does not carry advertisements. Ms. Sankar
said that she didn't write a business plan for the site, because she doesn't
believe in them, and that she believes that once a critical mass of students
and professors are signed up, revenue models can emerge. When pressed, she
says that in the future the company may charge for advanced analytics for
professors or other extra features.

She spends much of her time seeking feedback from
users and obsessively tinkering with the service in hopes of improving it.
"I am an engineer at heart," she explains.

To spread the word about the site, she has taken an
unusually personal approach. She sends e-mail messages to professors telling
her story and the goal of the site, and asking them to try it.

Greg Morrisett, a computer-science professor at
Harvard University, got one of those e-mails. He said he was curious, but he
was concerned that the site's policy noted that it claimed ownership over
comments posted on the site, which Mr. Morrisett felt violated Harvard's
policies. So he wrote back to Ms. Sankar and said he wasn't able to use it.
"Ten minutes later she wrote back and said, 'We fixed the policy,'" the
professor recalls. (Users now own their own posts.) So he gave it a shot.

PowerPoint is boring. Student attention spans are
short. Today many facts pop up with a simple Google search. And plenty of
free lectures by the world's greatest professors can be found on YouTube.

Is it time for more widespread reform of college
teaching?

This series explores the state of the college
lecture, and how technologies point to new models of undergraduate
education.

Last month, we began inviting students across the
countries to fire up their Web cameras or camera-phones to send us video
commentaries about whether lectures work for them. Below are highlights from
the first batch of submissions, which are full of frustration with
“PowerPoint abuse” – professors’ poor use of slide software that dumps too
much information on students in a less-than-compelling fashion.

Creative Computers Replacing Writers and ComposersAnd the frightening thing about this is that what might be "cheating"
becomes possible with zero chance of being caught for plagiarism of things
stories and songs written by Hal.

Here’s more about the program,
used in
one corner of Forbes‘ website: “Narrative
Science has developed a technology solution that creates rich narrative
content from data. Narratives are seamlessly created from structured data
sources and can be fully customized to fit a customer’s voice, style and
tone. Stories are created in multiple formats, including long form stories,
headlines, Tweets and industry reports with graphical visualizations.”

What do you think?
The
Narrative Sciencetechnology could potentially
impact many corners of the writing trade. The company has a long list of
stories they can computerize: sports stories, financial reports, real estate
analyses, local community content, polling & elections, advertising campaign
summaries sales & operations reports and market research.

While company shares have dropped 17.2% over
the last three months to close at $13.72 on February 15, 2012, Barnes & Noble (BKS)
is hoping it can break the slide with solid third quarter results when
it releases its earnings on Tuesday, February 21, 2012.

What to Expect: The Wall Street consensus is
$1.01 per share, up 1% from a year ago when Barnes & Noble reported
earnings of $1 per share.

The consensus estimate is down from three
months ago when it was $1.42, but is unchanged over the past month.
Analysts are projecting a loss of $1.09 per share for the fiscal year.

The company originated with two electrical
engineering and computer science professors at Northwestern University.
Here’s more about the company:
“[It began with] a software program that automatically generates sports
stories using commonly available information such as box scores and
play-by-plays. The program was the result of a collaboration between
McCormick and Medill School of Journalism. To create the software, Hammond
and Birnbaum and students working in McCormick’sIntelligent
Information Labcreated algorithms that use
statistics from a game to write text that captures the overall dynamic of
the game and highlights the key plays and players. Along with the text is an
appropriate headline and a photo of what the program deems as the most
important player in the game.”

Free online courses for the masses are all the
rage—and many are being run by start-ups hoping to profit by selling related
materials and services. Jim Groom thinks that’s too commercial, so he’s
raising money for the online course he co-teaches at the University of Mary
Washington using Kickstarter, the popular “crowd funding” service.

In a campaign
released today,the professor makes his plea in an
irreverent video that mixes in clips from a 90s true-crime show, and video
interviews with students and professors shot from unusual angles. He
explains that last year he ran the course, which is on digital storytelling
and is called DS106, using his own equipment. But the class has grown so
large that he needs a new server to keep it going, and he estimates that
will cost him $2,900.

He’s asking for contributions ranging from $1 to
$3,000, and those who give will get what he describes as “DS106 schwag”—a
T-shirt, a bumper sticker, or a desk calendar with a different creative
assignment for each day. Some of the rewards reflect the quirky nature of
the course itself: For $100 you can have one of the course assignments named
after you.

The campaign will run for a couple of weeks. If he
hasn’t met his goal of $4,200 (a price that figures in the server cost and
the price of the schwag), then the project gets nothing and all of those who
pledged keep their money. If the target is met, the deal is on. If the goal
is exceeded, he says he will use the extra money to add other enhancements
to the course.

In an interview this week, Mr. Groom stressed that
the course is “not about him,” and he criticized the way some massive online
courses rely on what amounts to a celebrity professor to attract students.
He used the word “community” frequently to describe the group of professors
and students involved in the course.

The idea for the campaign came from Tim Owens,
another instructional technologist at Mary Washington. “I’ve wanted to do a
Kickstarter for so long, but I’ve never been able to think of what could we
do,” he said. When he heard Mr. Groom wondering where they could come up
with $2,900, he suggested the crowd-funding site.

The Chronicle asked the folks at
Kickstarter whether other educational efforts have used the site to raise
money. A representative from the company pointed us to these five campaigns,
all of which succeeded:

—SmartHistory:
Raised $11,513 for a Web site created by two art historians.

Taking up the command line is easier if you have a
specific problem you’re trying to solve. For me, the problem was that I
wanted to do all of my writing in a
plain text format, like Markdownor
LaTeX. But I need to be able to share my writing
in a variety of formats: HTML for the web, PDF for printed documents or
academic writing, and occasionally RTF or Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.

The best way I’ve found to move between these
formats isPandoc.
Pandoc is a command line tool written by a philosophy
professor, John
MacFarlane. Its general use is to take a document
in one format and convert it to another. You can get an idea of the wide
variety of formats Pandoc can translate by looking at an
enlargement of the header diagram.

Here’s an example of how this works. Suppose that
you have a Markdown document like the one we created for the post on
Markdown. (View
pandoc-example.markdown on GitHub.)
You can convert this to a number of text formats with a simple terminal
command:

That command calls pandoc, tells it
which file to convert (pandoc-example.markdown) and tells it
which file to export (e.g., pandoc-example.html). Pandoc
figures out what types of files these are from the extension, or you can
pass it additional arguments. For some of the formats, you can convert the
other way. For example, you could convert LaTex to Markdown or to a Word
DOCX, or HTML to Markdown or LaTeX. To convert to PDF, though, you’ll need
to have LaTeX installed on your system.

Apple’s recent release of free software to build
e-textbooks has brought attention to custom publishing of academic
materials. But Apple’s software, called iBooks Author, lacks easy tools for
multiple authors to collaborate on a joint textbook project. Since most
books aren’t written in isolation, two new publishing platforms seek to make
that group collaboration easier.

The first,Booktype,
is free and open-source. Once the platform is
installed on a Web server, teams of authors can work together in their
browsers to write sections of books and chat with each other in real time
about revisions. Entire chapters can be imported and moved around by
dragging and dropping. The finished product can be published in minutes on
e-readers and tablets, or exported for on-demand printing. Booktype also
comes with community features that let authors create profiles, join groups,
and track books through editing.

Inkling
Habitat,the other new offering, appears to have
even greater ambitions. Where iBooks Author is designed mostly for would-be
amateur publishers, Inkling Habitat creates a cloud-based platform for the
professional market. Matthew MacInnis, Inkling’s chief executive, said the
company’s tool is designed to give the global teams who work on
professionally published textbooks a single outlet to publish interactive
material for the iPad and the Web. Mr. MacInnis said hundreds of users can
access the same textbook content at once, and the software will keep track
of each step in the editing process.

Inkling Habitat also automates some of the editing
process that is unique to e-textbooks, like checking for broken links
between special terms and their definitions in a glossary. Those automatic
functions, Mr. MacInnis said, will allow e-textbook publishing to get easier
without requiring additional staff. “You can’t build the industry up around
digital content if you’re going to throw people at every problem,” he said.

I did not know that iBooks were superior to all eBooks (including ToolBooks)
on the market.
Is that what you're trying to tell us?

Does this justify having to pay Apple a huge royalty on every iBook an
author sells?

I'm sorry, but I despise eBook vendors that do not support open standards.
Apple shot itself in the 1980s with the Mac operating system. Now it's
shooting itself in the other foot by trying to be an iBook hardware
monopoly. The tech world resists vendors that do not support open standards.
Excellent authors trying to make money on iBooks will pay a price!

Windows still has about 92% of the PC Market. Add to this the other
alternatives that won't run iBooks like Linux. The last time I looked Kindle
still had the overwhelming share of the eBook reader market. Seems like an
aspiring author should consider market share.

Personally, at think at this stage of technology, a textbook author should
still focus on eBook and hardcopy open standard alternatives and provide
multimedia supplements. Eventually, hard copy books will have something like
a USB port to a multimedia chip embedded in the binding.

Inspired by a Twitter conversation last week with
Caleb McDaniel (@wcaleb),
I decided to revisit it here.

I recently used Wordle in an assignment for my
January Intercession class (on F. Scott Fitzgerald) and found it very useful
for introducing students to close-reading and the basics of textual
analysis. As an English professor, textual analysis is one of the most
fundamental skills that I teach, and as a result, it can feel like the bane
of my existence. The source of my frustration (and that of my students) is
trying to get from summary and/or description to analysis. Students are
often very good at describing what is happening in a text, but it can be
very hard for them to break out of this habit and think about language in
other ways.

Enter Wordle.

To me, there are two things that make Wordle
invaluable:

It’s free and very easy to use. As an open
web-based program, all students with access to a computer can use it. It
doesn’t require specific hardware (read: iPad) or charge fees for
accessing the site.

It’s fun. Generating a Word Cloud is as simple
as clicking on the “Create” link, pasting in “a bunch of text,” and
clicking “Go.” Once the Word Cloud is created, students can then play
with fonts, color schemes, and other visual variables such as whether
they prefer the words to be laid out horizontally, vertically, or a bit
of both.

In my class, I first demonstrated how to use Wordle
with the novel we were reading (This Side of Paradise), which had
the added benefit of being published in 1921, so it is no-longer copyright
protected so I could use passages from
Project Gutenberg’s edition of the novelrather
than having to transcribe them manually. We created a few word clouds
together as a class to make sure everyone knew how to do it, and then I
asked the students how looking at these passages through the Wordle lens
might change their understanding. What did they notice seeing the words
rearranged, and in some cases resized (the size of words in the Wordle is
directly proportionate to the number of times that the word appears in the
initial text block)? By deconstructing and defamiliarizing the passage,
Wordle magically freed students from the summary trap and helped them to
think about the text analytically beyond the constraints of plot. Word
clouds do not have plots, at least not in the linear convention sense that
allows easy summary, so analysis was suddenly less confusing.

Finally, I asked students to create a Wordle on
their own and post a screenshot of it to the class blog. They could choose
any episode from This Side of Paradise that we had not already
examined together in class. Once they had their Wordle, they were asked to
answer a few questions: “Does this graphic visualization of the text
highlight certain themes or issues in the episode? Does it emphasize
particular themes or ideas? Do you notice things about the episode that you
had previously discounted in your earlier reading?”

Posting the Wordles to the website proved to be a
bit tricky for some, but that difficulty stemmed from the screenshot rather
than Wordle itself.

My class created some very interesting Wordles, and
more to the point, using this tool helped to make the task of literary
analysis less daunting, which is often no easy feat! I was left wondering
why I don’t use it more often in my classes and am currently trying to
figure out ways to incorporate it into other assignments.

Codecademy may not be a substitute for more
traditional forms of programming instruction, but this new platform does
offer possibilities for shaping hybrid learning or building coding
familiarity into a course dedicated to another topic, as customized
tutorials could supplement face to face instruction.Julie
Meloni makes some great points about the pedagogical problems of Codecademy
and the question of results: “…it is not teaching
you how to code. It is teaching you how to call-and-response, and is not
particularly helpful in explaining why you’re responding, why they’re
calling, or—most importantly—how to become a composer.” I share a number of
these concerns, particularly when Codecademy is the only source of
knowledge–and I hope that this new tool affords Codecademy the opportunity
to crowdsource new approaches to pedagogy.

There are some great examples of instructional
programming tools available for free on the web, such asScratch,
MIT’s young-learner friendly code “building blocks.”
(Scratch is just one kid-targeted programming tool: there are other greatsuggestions
at Digital Humanities Q&A.) But these are often
starter languages that don’t directly apply to web development or other
applications, and thus require additional investment before literacy in more
widely-used languages is achieved.

The choice of languages in Codecademy’s toolset
focuses on utilitarian scripting languages with a range of potential
applications. As Ryan Cordell noted in Ruby
for Humanists, Ruby is a great starting language
and its inclusion is particularly promising. As Ryan mentioned, there’s
already a site for learning programming basics through Ruby tutorials:Hackety Hack.
But Codecademy moves a step further with an easy
system for building and sharing interactive tutorials.

This is only at the nominating stage at this point.
It is, however, informative to read the nominations already listed as comments
to the above article.
I liked Paul Miller's nomination and try very hard year after year to serve
accounting like Tom Bruce serves law.

Guidance emerging from the International Federation
of Accountants might prove useful even in the United States in the coming
weeks as companies close the books on 2011 and plan for the year ahead.

IFAC's International Auditing and Assurance
Standards Board has issued a practice note on special considerations that
should be taken into account when auditing financial instruments. The alert,
titled
International Auditing Practice Note 1000, provide
some practical assistance to auditors when dealing with valuation and other
issues related to financial statement assertions, a touchy and complex area
in any entity's financial statements in light of economic pressures and an
increasing focus on fair value.

According to IAASB Chairman Arnold Schilder, the
practice note can help auditors understand the nature of and risks
associated with financial instruments as well as the different valuation
techniques and types of controls entities may use in relation to them. The
guidance also highlights audit considerations that should be taken into
account throughout the audit process. IAASB Technical Director James Gunn
said through a statement that the exercise of developing the guidance was
informative even to the board, which will further inform the board's work as
it develops future auditing standards.

In a separate release, IFAC's Professional
Accountants in Business Committee has
proposed some best practices guidance on evaluating and improving internal
controls to help organizations benchmark their
work in maintaining effective controls. The committee says the guidance is
intended to be useful to any organization, regardless of the internal
control framework it uses, to help deal with internal control issues that
are often problematic because of poor design or implementation.

Vincent Topoff, the committee's senior technical
manager, says the guidance would be meaningful even to U.S. companies where
internal controls are more closely scrutinized because it was developed in
part by U.S. experts who have spent many years working to improve internal
controls. “Together, they have identified in this guidance those areas where
the application of good practice guidance often goes wrong,” he says. “This
guidance considers the areas organizations need to continuously improve and
the issues they need to address.” The guidance is not meant to replace any
existing framework that is in use, he says.

Finally, the IAASB also refreshed its warnings to
auditors to keep economic conditions and pressures in mind as they consider
whether disclosures are adequate and whether there is reason to doubt an
entity can continue as a going concern. Companies continue to face
volatility in capital markets and exposure to debt in distressed countries,
leading to uncertainty that puts pressure on cash flow and access to credit,
the board advises. Those factors complicate the audit process, and therefore
must be considered closely, the board says.

A couple of weeks ago, my 12-year-old daughter
sought my advice about a video she wanted to make. Her concept was so
elaborate and involved so many scenes, I doubted it was even doable — unless
she used a green screen and filmed the whole thing in the basement.

A green screen, of
course, is the oldest trick in the movie-making book. You name the “how did
they film that?” movie — “Mission Impossible,” “Avatar,” “The Matrix,”
whatever — and I’ll show you scenes that they shot using the old-fashioned
green screen technique.To make it work, you film your actor in front of a
bright green background — either a green cloth or a painted wall. Then you
import the video into the computer, and its software elves cleverly replace
every pixel of green with a background you’ve selected, like a photograph or
a video you shot at another place or time. If it is done properly, the
audience never suspects that the actor was not, in fact, right there at the
Eiffel Tower, the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro or the moon.

¶The key word,
though, is “properly.” Getting green screen shots to look right is
fiendishly difficult. If the green dropcloth has wrinkles, if the actor
casts a shadow on it, if the actor’s lighting doesn’t match the substituted
video background, then the illusion is ruined. (Ever see the final scene of
“The Hunt for Red October”? The green screen setup is so crude, it almost
looks as if there are crayon lines around Sean Connery’s head.)

¶So as you can
imagine, my success at using home green screen kits has been pretty mixed.
Just hanging a green cloth usually doesn’t work very well. You have to light
the green cloth perfectly evenly, which requires at least two lights on
stands, to prevent shadows. Then you have to light the actor, which usually
requires a third light. And if you want your actor to walk, you need a
second green cloth on the ground (or you have to paint the floor).

¶After years
of fiddling around with amateur kits, I decided to see what a pro green
screen kit might cost. My daughter’s project needed one, and there have been
many times over the years when I’ve wished I had one for my own video
projects.

¶So I poked
around on photo-video Web sites likebhphotovideo.comand adorama.com.
As I figured, the pro kits, containing both screen and
lights, cost $1,300 and up. (A 6-by-6 cloth with frame by itself costs
$675.) But there, nestled among all the high-priced kits, I saw something
that I thought must be a misprint: a complete green screen setup —
9-by-10-foot green screen, a second 5-by-7-foot cloth, two 500-watt lights
with 20-inch “softboxes” (diffusing screens for even light), two collapsible
seven-foot light stands, software to teach you green screen techniques and
perform the actual actor extraction — for $250.

¶But the
customer reviews were overwhelmingly glowing. All of them seemed shocked
that a rig this good could cost so little.

¶It’s called
the Westcott uLite Green Screen Lighting Kit.It comes in a surprisingly tiny box, but everything was
compactly folded inside.In our basement, I hung
the 9-by-10-foot screen by its grommets from a water pipe along the ceiling.The light stands were easy
to set up, sturdy andextremely easy to
position and adjust.
With one on each side of the green screen, I had a huge, perfectly evenly
lit, wrinkle-free background.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
A popular application of this green backdrop filming is in weather forecast
videos where the broadcaster is not really standing in front of a weather map.

While reading this I kept thinking of how an instructor might use this same
technology to be immersed in an Excel spreadsheet or a MS Access database.

Compared to how things used to be done with desktop
computers, accessing your smartphone seems as instantaneous as it gets. You
just pick up the device, tap a button, slide a finger to the right, enter
(or Swype) your passcode and you're in. The whole process takes about two
seconds and requires virtually no physical energy on your part. Piece of
cake.

As quick and painless as this seems, Apple wants to
simplify things even further for owners of its iPhones, iPads and other iOS
devices. Imagine walking up to your phone or tablet in its dock and seeing
the screen light up with a greeting. You pick it up and pull it a few inches
closer to your face, and voilà! the screen is unlocked and the digital
universe is instantly at your finger tips.

This reality is not too far off, according to a
patent filed recently by Apple. The company wants to build presence and
facial recognition into its device so that users can simply approach and
peer into a device in order to activate it. No more PIN numbers or
button-pressing.

This is a feature already available on jailbroken
iPhones, but one that works very slowly and can easily be hacked using a
photograph.

Update: As some of our diligent commenters have
pointed out, facial recognition unlock feature is also available in Ice
Cream Sandwich, the latest version of Android. That implementation, however,
has been shown to be easily fooled and Google has acknowledged that its not
as secure as a traditional passcode.

The technology required to get this type of feature
to work effectively is pretty sophisticated and, as Patently Apple describes
it, "computationally expensive." The trade-off for using an alternative
method is weaker security, which defeats the purpose.

In a somewhat jargon-loaded post, the Apple
patent-watching blog describes how the company plans to overcome the
challenges associated with implementing such technology. Their method would
use a two-dimensional analysis of the placement of facial features as well
as skin tone and check those details against "target images" previously
captured by the device. This patent comes about a month after news of
Apple's acquisition of a patent for advanced 3D object recognition, which
could be used in a similar fashion.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
This technology might have a tremendous future in online and onsite academic
integrity. Firstly, it might discourage students from hiring smart people to
take entire courses for them. Secondly, it might discourage students from hiring
smart people from taking examinations for them. Thirdly, it might discourage
fraudulent students from being admitted to universities or to pretend they were
admitted like the guy who keeps pretending he's a Harvard Student.

And it may have tremendous possibilities in crime prevention. For example, a
pedophile with a long rap sheet might find it harder to get a job teaching in
pre-school or K-12 schools.

Three University of
Pennsylvania students who recently dropped out to start an upstart
course-management system today unveiled their software, calledCoursekit, after
having raised more than $1-million in venture capital.

The trio, frustrated
with the systems offered by universities, such as Blackboard,
decided to team upand design their own online
course platform, which emphasizes social networking and an easy-to-use
interface. By May, the founders, Joesph Cohen, Dan Getelman, and Jim
Grandpre, had raised so much start-up cash, from sources including the
Founder Collective and IA Ventures, that they decided to quit school to
focus on developing Coursekit.

Thirty universities
tested Coursekit this fall, including Stanford and the University of
Pennsylvania.

Coursekit offers a
platform for hosting discussions, posting grades and syllabi, sharing
calendars and links, and creating student profiles. The company has
hired 80 student ambassadors to introduce the new course-management
system to students at colleges across the country.

The software is one
of several new challengers to Blackboard, which is used by a majority of
U.S. colleges. In October, Pearson announced OpenClass, a free
course-management system, and last year a Utah company called
Instructure unveiled Canvas, which
is available under an open-source license.

For collaboration tools, we used Sharepoint in our
intro to MIS course, which is required for all business students. Since we
adopted Pearson products, Pearson provided with the full version of
Sharepoint and 200 access codes. Students can rent the ebook for 180 days on
Coursesmart for $24 (list price of hard copy is $56). My techphobic students
struggled with learning Sharepoint, and all of us, I included, did take some
time to get the hang of it. I think Sharepoint makes a great tool for an AIS
course because students have to make many security/control/access decisions
for their own group sites. For example, what kind of permissions do you
grant to various people/groups? How are you going to control access to
documents? Are you going to use check-out/check-in for documents or are you
going to let multiple people edit simultaneously?

I am going to use it in my graduate AIS course next
semester for the reasons stated above and because they will likely use
Sharepoint or some other set of collaboration tools in their professional
careers.

iTunesas we know it is over. It is walking, talking, and
continuing to pretend it's alive, but Spotify,
Europe's outrageously successful streaming music product, has just shown us
the future.

Though you might not even be aware of the
competitor that is attacking the music titan of the past decade, that iTunes
business model is about to be blown up completely and swiftly. And it could
even be thought of as fitting; iTunes accomplished the exact same thing
during its early-2000s attack on the bricks-and-mortar retail music
industry. Apple set the stage to decimate Tower Records and Sam Goody before
either had a clue their industry was about to revolt. But innovation theory
can provide a crystal ball; theory could have predicted iTunes' success and
it's currently predicting Spotify's success.

To appreciate the truth of this claim, it's vital
to understand one of Clayton Christensen's theories on marketing and product
development:
Jobs-to-be-done. Jobs-to-be-done suggests that in
order to predict how to develop, compare, and position our products, we
should be driven by a fundamental understanding of what that product is
hired to do. For example, every day I hire a Coke to be a wake-me-up
mid-afternoon break in my workday. To get the Coke, I walk from my building
to a store next door and pay $1.25. I could substitute a free cup of coffee
from my own office, which would provide my much-needed caffeine at no cost.
But because the job is to break up the afternoon, I value both the caffeine
in the product and the distance I walk to pick up the product. I am happy to
pay for the Coke because it completes the job I hire a mid-day beverage to
complete. To disrupt the purchase of my afternoon Coke, a product would has
to be fundamentally advantaged in one of the two areas I value for that
product; caffeine and time away from my desk.

When it comes to the music industry, I used to hire
Tower Records to deliver my music. For that job, I valued Tower's music
selection, the store's convenient locations, the fact that its music was
compatible with my Discman, and the low prices. When I compared Tower to
other options to fulfill that job, it was pretty well positioned.

Enter iTunes. After iTunes was introduced, its
online model beat Tower in selection, convenience, and price. As an online
storefront it had a fundamental advantage. It was in your home, had no shelf
space limiting its inventory, and could beat Tower on price because of its
lower fixed costs. The only thing that might have kept Tower treading water
at first was its ability to be compatible with Discmen, which we know now
disappeared quickly. With a basic grasp of technology innovation trends,
Tower should have known as much and immediately begun running around with
its hair on fire.

Now, a decade later, enter Spotify (at least, enter
the U.S. market). Based on the job of delivering music, Spotify completes
the job of delivering music in much the same way as iTunes does. Spotify is
conveniently located, has a wonderful selection, is compatible with my
computer, smartphone, and tablet (which are in turn compatible with my
stereo and car), and is backward-compatible to play music from my existing
iTunes library.

Audiences for oral presentations and poster
sessions at academic conferences often want more information about a
particular topic. One way to provide this, obviously, is to create printed
flyers or brochures and hope that you’ve brought enough copies for everyone
who’s interested. But what if your printed handout doesn’t make it all the
way back on your audience member’s trip home?

For example, Peter Organisciak gave a talk entitled
“When to Ask For Help: Evaluating Projects For Crowdsourcing,” and on one of
his presentation slides–as you can see in the photo at the start of this
post–he displayed this QR code:

If you have to jointly
author a spreadsheet with a colleague, what is the first thing that you do?
Email it back and forth. This can be painful, particularly as you try to
keep track of your partner's changes and hope the emails transit back and
forth across the Internet. Add a third or fourth person, and things get
worse. Luckily, there is a better way, and a number of Web-based service
providers have stepped up with tools to make spreadsheet sharing a lot
easier than sending attachments.

We've written about a
few of them, including
Longjumpand Hyperbase (one of our products of the
year for 2008), but I have tried a bunch others, and will show you what is
involved and how they stack up.

The process is very
straightforward: you either copy and paste data or take your spreadsheet and
upload it to the service, after creating accounts for you and your
collaborators. Then you can make changes via your Web browser, no other
software is required. Some of the services allow for more bells and
whistles. Setup time is minimal; your data is properly protected by the
service and safe from harm. And you don't need to learn any Web/database
programming skills either.

For many people, the
spreadsheet is still one of the most popular low-end database applications.
The rubric of a table of rows and columns is easily understood and can
easily be used as a way to view records and fields of a database. Plus, you
don't need to design special reports to view your data entries, and you can
easily sort your data without having to create data dictionaries or other
database structures, just use the appropriate Excel commands. Having a
specialized service that can share this data makes it easier to collaborate
too, whether your partners are across the office or on the other side of the
world. As long as they have an Internet connection, they are good to go.

There are eight different
services currently available, in order of increasing cost:

Pricing and
support

When you decide on the
particular service, it pays to read the pricing fine print. There are
discounts for annual subscriptions on most services, and some such as
Smartsheet offer additional discounts for non-profit and educational
institutions. All of these services have 14 day or 30 day free trials to
get started, so you can get a feel of what is involved in manipulating
your data and how easy it is to make changes, produce reports, and
receive notifications.

Continued in article

June 18, 2011 reply from Amy Dunbar

I find Google docs great for small spreadsheets,
but cumbersome for large files.

I set up Dropbox folders for each of my groups in
my online class (3-5 students in a group). They post their project
spreadsheets in the group folders, and if a student has a question, I can
quickly open the spreadsheet to see what is going on. Students contact me by
AIM and we discuss the spreadsheet via AIM. Works like a charm for me.

With the launch of Google Plus,
there may be some confusion as to how the photos uploaded to the social
network (Google+) integrate with Google's online photo-sharing service
(Picasa),
especially in terms of storage limits. The answer provides some great news
for Google Plus users - nearly everything you upload to Google Plus won't
count towards your storage limits on Picasa, with the only exception being
videos longer than 15 minutes.

Here's one we missed.
Bing launched Bing+ last week, it just skipped all
the unnecessary stuff. (It's not really called Bing+.) There's a
new feature called Linked Pagesthat allows Bing users (U.S. only, for now) to connect
their various websites and profiles to their Bing identities, using Facebook
for authentication. You can also link your Facebook friends to their pages.

Thanks to its relationship with Facebook, Microsoft
has the advantage of not needing to build its own identity provider or
social network. Everyone's already on Facebook. To build good results for
people, Bing will use the same technique Facebook Groups use: get friends to
draw their own graph. Just like with Facebook Groups, if a friend connects
you to something you don't want, you can remove it permanently. We all
thought that feature would suck for Groups, but it worked just fine.
Facebook Groups build themselves, and Bing can build identities the same
way.

It's a shame, because some of these features are
absolutely wonderful.
What could be more social than Hangouts? Google+
is full of great ideas, but it is struggling to bring them together. The
user experience isn't there. And that's all
because Google felt the need to build a full-blown social network itself in
order to act as an identity service.

Couldn't Hangouts have just been a Gmail feature?

Social Search Is All We Needed

There's no need for a new social network, but there
is a reason to put personal identities in search. Searching for
people has always been a terrible experience. It's nearly impossible to find
the person you're looking for, unless they're famous. Search engines need an
identity layer.

Bing is just being honest about that. If you want
to control the way you appear in search, you can connect the sites
and pages that matter to you via Facebook. Your friends can do it, too. When
you use Bing to search for people, now you'll be able to find the content
that's related to them. That's
what Search, plus Your World doesfor Google, but
Bing does it without requiring this new, extra place to waste time online.

Google could have done that. The Google+ profile
works exactly the way Bing's Linked Pages does, allowing users to
link their outside sites and pages to themselves.
It could have just made a Facebook app, and boom, there are your social
search results. But that's not how the business works. Google and Facebook
can't cooperate. They have to compete for eyeballs around social content,
and
Facebook is winning.

Jensen Comment
At this point Mark really does not offer answers in the above article. And I
never taught a large class on campus or online so I don't have a lot to offer.

It is important to discuss what is meant by a large class. Over 30 years ago
I had an economist friend who taught economics via television piped into
basements of dormitories at Michigan State University. His classes always had
over 1,000 students. But these were not all "his" classes. Students were also
part of relatively small recitation sections where they could personally
identify with a teaching assistant in Al's television course.

I think a large class is a class of 90 like you find in the Harvard Business
School when there are no recitation sections that are also part of the course. I
never could figure out how case-method instructors could grade case discussion
participation when each student on average got less than one minute of air time
in a 90-minute class. I don't think we turn to the Harvard Business School to
seek out technology ideas for large classes.

Barry Rice had large basic accounting classes at Loyola College in Maryland.
Over 20 years ago his technology of choice was ToolBook and HyperGraphics
hand-held clickers (response pads) where he flashed student names on the screen
and asked them to recite in front of the class ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#ResponsePads

Probably the pedagogy of choice for large courses is video where students
outside the classroom can learn asynchronously at their own learning paces and
styles. At BYU the basic accounting courses rarely meet face-to-face. The
technical learning all takes place via variable-speed video (faculty at other
colleges can adopt the specially-recorded BYU DVD disks) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo

I think it would be great if some of the faculty who teach large classes (say
over 50 students) would share some of their teaching tips on the AECM.

We thought we’d begin a new year of Wired Campus
with a quick look back at the biggest tech stories of 2010, as voted by you.
Items concerning Facebook, iPads, and cheating ranked high in page views.
Here are the top 10 headlines from our tech blog:

The OpenScout Tool Library is a social network of
individuals and collectives who are developing or using learning resources
and want to share their stories and resources from different countries.

The OpenScout Tool Library is currently hosting the activities of the
COLEARN community of research in collaborative learning and educational
technologies in the Portuguese language. This group is run by Alexandra
Okada (The Open University UK) and consists of learners, educators and
researchers from academic institutions in Brazil, Portugal and Spain. Their
interests focus on collaborative participation through social media,
colearning (collaborative open learning) using Open Educational Resources (OER),
Social Media and Web 2.0 research. There are 26 research groups from
Brazilian and Portugal universities - 115 people currently registered in the
Tool Library.

At the moment, this community is developing a book project called "Web 2.0:
Open Educational Resources in Learning and Professional Development". From
January to February 2012, three workshops will be run in the Tool Library
for improving OER skills: image, presentation and audio/visual material.
These collaborative activities and workshops aim at engaging people in
developing their skills and discussing concepts as well as preparing
themselves to be OER users who are able to produce, remix and share open
resources and open ideas.

Before George Washington University renewed its
iTunes U contract, the administration wanted to know how the podcasts
impacted student learning and engagement.

In fall 2009, the university's Center for
Innovative Teaching and Learning studied a world history class of 262
students to find the answer.

But the answer isn't yes or no — the answer depends
on the student's learning style, gender and motivation.

“If your goal is to find a magic bullet that makes
all students better, this isn’t it," said Hugh Agnew, a professor from the
Elliott School of International Affairs who taught the course. "But If your
goal is to reach some students better that maybe you aren’t reaching so
terribly well, then I think this is worth trying.”

6 interesting results He created 10-minute podcasts
with graphics and audio, as well as a text transcript of the podcasts with
visuals to supplement his lecture class. In the first research run, half of
the class used the podcasts, and the other half used the text. In the second
run, they switched.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on learning and memory are at the following two sites:

Greg Smith, chief information officer at George Fox,
said the iPad's technological limitations—its inability to multitask and print,
and its limited storage space—have kept students dependent on their notebooks.
"That's the problem with the iPad: It's not an independent device," he said.
"Classroom iPad Programs Get Mixed Response," by Travis Kaya,
Chronicle of Higher Education, September 20, 2010 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Classroom-iPad-Programs-Get/27046/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

A few weeks after a handful of colleges gave away
iPads to determine the tablet's place in the classroom, students and faculty
seem confident that the device has some future in academe.

But they're still not exactly sure where that might
be.

At those early-adopter schools, iPads are competing
with MacBooks as the students' go-to gadget for note taking and Web surfing.
Zach Kramberg, a first-year student at George Fox University, which allowed
incoming students to choose between a complimentary iPad or MacBook this
fall, said the tablet has become an important tool for recording and
organizing lecture notes. He also takes the device with him to the
university's dimly lit chapel so he can follow along with an app called
iBible. "The iPad's very easy to use once you figure them out," he said.

Still, Mr. Kramberg said the majority of students
rely on bound Bibles in chapel and stick to pen and paper or MacBooks in the
classroom.

Greg Smith, chief information officer at George
Fox, said the iPad's technological limitations—its inability to multitask
and print, and its limited storage space—have kept students dependent on
their notebooks. "That's the problem with the iPad: It's not an independent
device," he said.

Mr. Smith said that the 67 students—10 percent of
the freshman class—that opted for iPads over MacBooks are really excited
about the technology but have not been "pushing the capabilities" of the
device.

Caitlin Corning, a history professor at George Fox,
said it's been hard to meld iPads into the curriculum because only a small
subset of her students has the device. Ms. Corning used the iPad as a
portable teaching tool during a student art trip to Europe this summer,
flashing Van Gogh works on the screen when they were in the places he
painted them. Translating that portable-classroom experience into her
classroom back in Oregon, however, has not been easy. "It's still a work in
progress," she said. "It's a little complex because only some of the
freshmen have iPads."

Faculty members at Seton Hill University, which
gave iPads to all full-time students, are working with the developers of an
e-book app called Inkling to come up with new ways to integrate the iPad
into classroom instruction. The textbook software—one of many in
development—allows students to access interactive graphics and add notes as
they read along. Faculty members can access the students' marginalia to see
whether they understand the text. They can also remotely receive and answer
questions from students in real time.

Catherine Giunta, an associate professor of
business at Seton Hill, said the technology has changed the way students
interact with their textbooks and how she interacts with her students. While
reviewing the margin notes of a student in her marketing class, Ms. Giunta
was able to pinpoint and correct a student's apparent misunderstanding of a
concept that was going to be covered in class the next day. "The
misunderstanding may not have been apparent until [the student] did a
written report," Ms. Giunta said. "I could really give her individualized
instruction and guidance."

As students and faculty members around the country
feel around for new ways to integrate the iPad into academic life, a handful
of programs are taking a more formal approach to finding its place in the
classroom. Students in the Digital Cultures and Creativity program at the
University of Maryland at College Park will turn a critical eye on the iPad
as a study tool while integrating it into their curriculum. "I think
[students are] taking a sort of wait-and-see approach," said Matthew
Kirschenbaum, the program director and an associate professor of English.

Similarly, the faculty at Indiana University has
formed a 24-member focus group to evaluate iPad-driven teaching strategies.
The groups have started meeting this month to assess how their iPad
experiments are going, with a preliminary report due in January. "It's meant
to be a supportive, collaborative, formalized conversation," said Stacy
Morrone, Indiana's associate dean of learning technologies. "We don't expect
that everything will go perfectly."

Although not entirely related to the substance of
the iPad educational debate, a pilot program at Long Island University was
thrust into the spotlight over the weekend in an animated e-mail exchange
between a college journalist and Apple's founder Steve Jobs. As Gawker
reports it, complaints about a few unreturned media inquiries from a
deadline-stressed reporter led to a curt "leave us alone" response from the
Apple chief executive.

In the e-mail chain, Mr. Jobs said, "Our goals do
not include helping you get a good grade."

The forensic practices at the Big 4 are WAY ahead
of the accounting academia in using the technology to cover the dark side of
social networking in e-discovery. We in the accounting academia have been
too busy regressing to take note.

I know of at least two who used it extensively in
fraud examination as far back as 2008. They demonstrated its use to me while
I was designing our fraud examination course.

I'm not sure I've ever said this out loud, but
ReadWriteWebis my absolute favorite blog in all the blogosphere,
and has been since they began covering all things technology-relatedin 2003 or so—it's
the emphasis on critical thinking and analysis rather than knee-jerk
"first!" responses to news and events that makes me respect them so.

However, I'm interested in your answers as
well. No, I don't aim to write a similar story as Audrey, but I do
wonder about the different answers based on the different audiences.
Audrey's readership comes from the already highly-technologically-inclined,
often found on Twitter. The ProfHacker audience in the CHE is not
necessarily so. In fact, I think it is safe to say that the majority of the
ProfHacker readership is not on Twitter and is more
technology-curious than technology-embedded (or invested).

So, I'd like to hear from you as well. In the
comments, please let us know what's the tech tool you're most
excited to take into the classroom with you this fall? (anything
hardware or software "counts," and I'll even accept analog technologies as
valid answers)

Hopefully, given your responses and Audrey's own
article from (predominantly) her own audience, there will be some
interesting food for thought on the state of technology in higher ed.

Jensen Comment
“Taking into the classroom” is a rather ambiguous
phrase that should probably read “taking into the course.” In the latter case,
something Camtasia is still on my list of important priorities for things to add
to virtually any course whether onsite or online ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5342/

Here are three videos that I made
to show my colleagues how to use Camtasia to make a class video for when you
go out of town, or to create a tutorial for your class.
I figured that some of you might be interested, so here they are. Please
note that these are not Richard Campbell-quality videos. I shot these
quickly and without any script. I made only a couple of minor edits.

Also, please note I used
Screencast-O-Matic to make the first part of Part 1 so that I could capture
setting up Camtasia Recorder. Pay attention to before and after I press the
Record button to see the differences between the two applications.

Years ago economics professor Lanny Arvan directed the famous in a controlled
SCALE experiments comparing resident full-time students at the University of
Illinois taking onsite versus online courses from the same instructors using
common grade assessment procedures. Thirty courses across multiple disciplines
were examined across five years of experimentation ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm#Illinois
In spite of some technology glitches in those olden days, many students tended
to prefer taking the courses online. Typically, many more students moved from B
grades to A grades in online courses. However, there tended to not be much
difference for D and F students, indicating that lack of motivation and aptitude
cuts across online and onsite pedagogies in mostly the same way.

“It is my impression
that no one really likes the new. We are afraid of it. It is not only as
Dostoevsky put it that 'taking a new step, uttering a new word is what
people fear most.' Even in slight things the experience of the new is rarely
without some stirring of foreboding.” --Eric Hoffer, Between The Devil And The Dragon

I tried the new in fall
2009,
teaching with student blogs, (look in sidebar and
scroll down) out in the open where anyone who wanted to could see what the
students were producing. The blogging wasn’t new for me. I’d been
doing that for almost five years. Having students
blog was a different matter. I had no experience in getting them to overcome
their anxieties, relaxing in writing online, learning to trust one another
that way. Normally I believe what’s good for the goose is good for the
gander. If I could blog comfortably and get something from that, so could
they. On reflection, however, I was very gentle with myself when I started
to blog. As an experiment to prove to myself whether I could do it, for
three full weeks I made at least one post a day, 500 to 600 words, a couple
of times 1,100 to 1,200 words. I didn’t tell a soul I was doing this. There
was no pressure on me to keep it up. It was out in the open, yet nobody
seemed to be watching. After those three weeks I felt ready. In the
teaching, however, at best I could ask the students to blog once a week. I
gave the students weekly prompts on the readings or to follow up on class
discussion. (See theclass calendar for fall 2009. The prompts
are in the Friday afternoon entries.) If I let them blog quietly to get
comfortable as I had done, the entire semester would expire before they were
ready to go public. There seemed no alternative but to have them plunge in.

The uncertainty about how
best to assist the students once they had taken the plunge created an
important symmetry between the students and me; we both were to learn about
how to do this well, often by first doing it less well. Though it was an
inadvertent consequence, of all my teaching over the past 30 years I believe
this course came closest to emulating theSeven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education by
Chickering and Gamson. I learned to comment on the student posts, not with
some pre-thought-through response based on what I anticipated they’d write,
but rather to react to where they appeared to be in their own thinking.
(This
postprovides a typical example. The student
introduced time management as a theme. My comment aimed to make her think
more about time management.) As natural as that is to do in ordinary
conversation, I had never done it before when evaluating student work.
Indeed, I didn’t think of these comments as evaluation at all. I thought of
them as response. In the normal course of my non-teaching work I respond to
colleagues all the time and they respond to me. This form of online
interaction in the class made it more like the rest of my interactions at
work.

Most of the students were
quite awkward in their initial blogging. Good students all, the class was a
seminar on "Designing for Effective Change" for the
Honors Program, but lacking experience in
this sort of approach to instruction, the students wrote to their conception
of what I wanted to hear from them. I can’t imagine a more constipated
mindset for producing interesting prose. For this class there was a need for
them to unlearn much of their approach which had been finely tuned and was
quite successful in their other classes. They needed to take more
responsibility for their choices. While I gave them a prompt each week on
which to write, I also gave them the freedom to choose their own topic so
long as they could create a tie to the course themes. Upon reading much of
the early writing, I admonished many of them to "please themselves" in the
writing. I informed them that they could not possibly please other readers
if they didn’t first please themselves. It was a message they were not used
to hearing. So it took a while for them to believe it was true. In several
instances they tried it out only after being frustrating with the results
from their usual approach. This, as Ken Bain teaches us,
is how students learn on a fundamental level.

I'm crustier now than I
was as a younger faculty member. Nonetheless, I find it difficult to deal
with the emotion that underlies giving feedback to students when that
feedback is less than entirely complimentary to them. Yet given their
awkward early attempts at writing posts that’s exactly what honest response
demanded. It’s here where having the postings and the comments out in the
open so all can see is so important, before the class has become a
community, before the students have made up their minds about what they
think about this blogging stuff. Though both the writing and the response
are highly subjective, of necessity, it is equally
important for the process to be fair. How can a
student who receives critical comments judge those comments to be fitting
and appropriate, rather than an example of the insensitive instructor
picking on the hapless student? Perhaps a very mature student can discern
this even-handedly from the comments themselves and a self-critique of the
original post. I believe most students benefit by reading the posts of their
classmates, making their own judgments about those writings and then seeing
the instructor’s comments, finally making a subsequent determination as to
whether those comments seem appropriate and helpful for the student in
reconsidering the writing.

A positive feedback loop
can be created by this process. The commenting, more than any other activity
the instructor engages in, demonstrates the instructor’s commitment to the
course and to the students. In turn the students, learning to appreciate the
value of the comments, start to push themselves in the writing. Their
learning is encouraged this way. Further, since the blogging is not a
competition between the students and their classmates, those who like
getting comments begin to comment on the posts of other students. The
elements of the community that the class can become are found in this
activity.

Since on a daily basis I
use blogs and blog readers in my regular work, one of the original reasons
for me taking this approach rather than use the campus learning management
system was simply that I thought it would be more convenient for me. Also,
given my job as a learning technology administrator, I went into the course
with some thought that I might showcase the work afterward. Openness is
clearly better for that. However in retrospect neither of these is primary.
The main reason to be open is to set a good tone for the class. We want
ideas to emerge and not remain concealed.

Yet there remains one
troubling element: student privacy. Is open blogging this way consistent
with
FERPA? As best as I’ve been able to determine, it
is as long as students “opt in.” (I did give students the alternatives of
writing in the class LMS site or writing in the class wiki site. No student
opted for those.) My experience suggests, however, that is not quite
sufficient. If most students opt in, peer pressure may drive others to opt
in as well. More importantly, however, students choose to opt in when they
are largely ignorant of the consequences. Might they feel regret after they
better understand what the blogging is all about?

If you want your web pages to only display what you
want to read, this is an incredible tool. It strips a web page of all but
what you want to read. Go to this web site, check the settings you desire,
and drag the Readabiity box to your browser toolbar. When you are viewing a
page click on the Readabiity box on your browser toolbar and the page you
are viewing is cleaned of all but what you want to read.
http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

The school year isn't so far away, and educators
may want to take a close look at this most helpful web application. Quizlet
allows students and teachers to create flashcard sets with little fuss, and
they can also share their flashcards with friends via email, Facebook, or
MySpace. The site has a great "How do I??" section that provides many
answers to how to best use the program. Quizlet is compatible with all
operating systems.

Want to make an online notice board? It's never
been easier than with Wallwisher, which is a new application that offers a
number of excellent features. Visitors can use the application to put up
just about any item on their wall, including video clips, audio files,
drawings, photographs, and so on. "Walls" can be set so only certain
individuals can have access to them, and visitors do not need to sign up an
account to get started. This version is compatible with all operating
systems.

School districts and college campuses across the
country are trying to grab students' attention and teach them in ways they
learn best. That means they're adding social media features to learning
management systems, offering more online and blended courses, and taking
advantage of mobile devices.

Learning management systems

In 2008, 35 percent of the K-12 schools surveyed
said they had no plans to buy a
learning management system, but lower prices and
higher federal accountability requirements will change their minds,
according to the report. And when they do change their minds, they'll be
looking for digital content and professional development to go along with
the systems.

They'll also be looking for tools including
curriculum planning and lesson management. These tools allow them to create
detailed lesson plans for individual students and assign digital curriculum
lessons to students.

In higher education, professors increasingly rely
on digital content and use social media to teach their students. They're
also adding more online classes and reducing administrative costs. As a
result, learning management systems should be incorporating rich Internet
applications, social media, user-generated content, mobile devices, Software
as a Service and business process management systems.

Faculty members expect to do a number of tasks in
learning management systems:

Post grades, access class rosters

Set up class chats to answer questions

Hold electronic office hours

Add course assignments to student calendars

Send announcements to the class

Access enhanced learning management and course
management systems

Online learning

The e-learning market has been expanding steadily,
and over the next four years, forecasters predict that K-12 online learning
will advance at a compound annual growth rate of 17 percent, while higher
education will grow at 8 percent.

In online learning, blended or hybrid classes that
combine face-to-face and online instruction are popping up, particularly in
higher education. And the expansion of
open source contenton sites such as Flatworld
Knowledge, Curriki and CK12 give teachers and professors more options to
potentially save money.

Mobile devices, WiMAX technology, podcasts and
software tools allow students to learn any time, anywhere. And that
mobile computing experienceis what they're
looking for.

Mobile computing

In the past two years,
netbooks have arrived on the scene, but their
sales are already growing more than 200 percent per year. K-12 schools
adopt them at a higher rate because many of them provide devices for their
students. Netbook trends include 10-inch screens, faster processors, longer
battery life and built-in wireless wide area networks.

Laptop useis still growing steadily, but not as
fast as it was previously. Laptop trends include LED backlights, backlit
keyboards, more rugged mechanical designs, larger hard drives, newer
processor designs and increased availability of 3G/4G wireless wide area
network support.

Meanwhile, tablet computers are becoming more
popular in postsecondary education, and companies are creating smartbooks
that have long battery lives of about two days.

More people view Web pages through smart phones and
cell phones than through computers. Cell phones have become widely accepted
in postsecondary education, while many K-12 districts still ban them in the
classroom.

On the connectivity side, most postsecondary
campuses have robust WiFi, but less than 30 percent of K-12 classrooms have
robust WiFi access. While WiFi has been around for more than 10 years, WiMAX is
coming on the scenes as a 4G wide area data service in the U.S. And don't
forget the cellular 3G and 4G data services for smart phones.

While these are some trends that are happening now
and in the next year or two, the report also forecasts what education
technology will look like in the future. In the next five years, the report
predicts that
cloud computing,
cell phone useand 3G and 4G data plans will
become mainstream in education.

I take notes. A lot of notes. I take notes when I
read, when I'm in meetings, when I'm listening to lectures, when I'm
figuring out what I need to do any given day. In fact, if I ever tell you
that I'm going to do something, but you don't see me make myself a note
about it, don't believe me.

Notes are the key to remembering, for me. Or, more
precisely: the act of taking notes is the key to remembering. Something
about the act of taking notes helps make an idea, or an issue, or a plan
more real to me.

I used to take these notes longhand, in various
notebooks, some devoted to particular projects, some to more general
notetaking. Several years back, though, I began shifting my notetaking to
the computer, so that those notes would be more easily searchable and
repurposeable.

Originally, I used Word for this purpose, but after
one MS Office upgrade too many, requiring that all of my documents be
converted (and thus become unreadable to the older version of the software),
I decided that I wanted something more lightweight. The purpose of these
notes, after all, was the text that went into them, and not their
formatting; plain vanilla ".txt" files were likely to remain highly flexible
into the future.

But those .txt files started proliferating on my
machine, and so did the folders I used to organize them. And while Mac OS
X's search capabilities via Spotlight aren't all that bad now, that wasn't
always the case. So when I stumbled across Steven Johnson's post about how he used DEVONthink,
I was sold.

DEVONthink is an extraordinarily powerful
information management system -- a bit too powerful, quite honestly, for
what I needed it to do. So back in May, when Shawn Miller guest-posted here on ProfHacker
about how he uses Evernote, I was
persuaded to give it a try.

One might begin to think I'm too easily swayed, but
honestly, I test out a lot of software that doesn't stick with me long. I've
been using Evernote for just shy of two months now, though, and I'm fairly
sure I'll be using it for a while. A few reasons why:

1. Automatic. I have Evernote
installed on my office desktop, my home desktop, my laptop, my iPad, and my
iPhone. And each of those instances automatically connects to the Evernote
server to keep my notes synchronized across all my devices. I've had one
incident in which I accidentally overwrote a more recent version of a note
by editing an old version before my iPhone had finished downloading the most
recent updates to my notebooks, but now I'm more cautious to be sure
everything has synchronized before I start typing in an existing note.

2. Web accessible. My notes are
also of course directly accessible from the Evernote server, should I not
have one of those five devices with me.

3. Lightweight. The Evernote
application itself has a very small footprint, using the teeniest amount of
memory and disk space. It's also quite nice in terms of response time. And
as most of my notes are just plain text, the database doesn't take up much
in the way of space.

4. Flexible. Of course, I don't
have to confine my notes to text with Evernote: I can easily
capture entire web pages with the Chrome (or other browser) extension, I can
import images and PDFs, and any number of other things I haven't even tried
yet. And, as Shawn pointed out, images are OCRable, so that the text within
them becomes searchable just like the rest of my notes.

5. Free. As I was just
experimenting with Evernote over the last two months, I haven't committed to
the paid version as yet. But the free version is thus far everything I need.
I've never come anywhere near using all of the monthly data allowance of the
free version, and the little ad in the corner of the application is
inoffensive. At some point, I'll probably upgrade to the paid version,
partially for a bit more flexibility in the kinds of files I can attach to
notes, and partially to support the team developing a really great project.

I do perhaps wish that my text files were really
stored as text files (Evernote saves them in its own proprietary
XML-based format, as well as in HTML format), but for what I'm doing, just
being able to find and copy the notes is enough. And overall I've had a
great experience with Evernote so far, which is allowing my notetaking habit
to become more productive and more organized than before.

For anyone who spent time in public practice, the “timesheet”
was both a good thing and a bad thing! It helped you keep track of what you
accomplished (and what you didn’t). I have often wondered whether
maintaining a timesheet would be a useful exercise for a faculty member.

A couple of years ago, I discovered a personal
timesheet program callediZeptodeveloped by
Shine Technologies, an Australian
company. I started using iZepto to keep track of my time. iZepto is
particularly useful when preparing my annual faculty activitity report.

iZepto is a Web 2.0 hosted software service. There
is nothing to download except reports that you setup and print
periodically. It is easy to tailor to personal needs. Classify your
activities in ways that make sense to you.

iZepto is free for 1 to 3 users. Great price! For
iPhone users, there is a freeiPhone applicationthat you can
download from the iPhone App Store. What could be more useful?

iZepto is a great personal productivity tool. Take
a look. Give it a try.

While attending a recent accounting education
conference, I played with
Pulse SmartpenbyLivescribe.
The Pulse Smartpen records and links audio to what you
write. It provides an interesting way to take notes and capture information
that can be played back later for review, study, and/or sharing with others.

I was curious about ways the Pulse Smartpen might
be used to create course materials and share them with students.
Livescribe’s website includes a variety of illustrative recordings. Click
this link to view a demo lecture entitled “Crossing
the Chasm.” The demo shows how to use
the Pulse Smartpen to record and share a lecture that includes
drawing a picture or diagram and supporting the drawing with audio.
[NOTE: In order to make the viewing screen easier to see, you may wish to
click the icon in the upper right-corner of the playback screen to enlarge
the viewing screen.]

I see how the Pulse Smartpen can capture a drawing
and audio explaining the drawing. This could be particularly useful for
creating a walk-through explanation of a problem or process. Note that you
need to draw the picture from scratch as you put together a walk-through
explanation.

At Holmdel High School in New Jersey, students
speak Spanish in front of their class, but they also practice their language
skills on the phone.

This year, Spanish 2 teacher Katy Taylor wanted to
find a different way to assess their progress in addition to listening to
oral presentations in class. So, she asked them to call her Google Voice
number and leave a message.

On their own time, the students read something in
Spanish or create a dialogue, which could take up to 1 1/2 minute. Google
Voice captures the audio and sends her an e-mail with the recording
attached. Then she listens to their recordings and e-mails them feedback —
and it's all free.

Google Voice, a telecommunications service by
Google launched in March 2009, provides a U.S. phone number, chosen by the
user from available numbers in selected area codes, free of charge to each
user account.

“It was kind of just fun to experiment and see how
it works in the classroom," Taylor said, "and the kids respond really well
to it.”

Instead of taking up clas time, they dial in to her
phone number, and then she can go online that evening to hear what they've
done.

Many students are afraid to make mistakes in front
of their peers, so when they do receive a recording assignment, they're more
apt to take risks because they have some privacy.

“I’m hoping that the end result will be that
students are speaking more and getting feedback," Taylor said. "Every time I
think it gets a little better.”

March 11,
2010 message from XXXXX

Bob,

I am wondering if you know of any websites where I can gain access to watch
camtasia-style (or narrated powerpoints) videos/lectures of upper level
accounting instruction?

My Dean asked me to look into creating an asynchronous, distance/hybrid
accounting program. I want to get an idea of what is out there. I think the
classes I need are:

I'm not sure I've ever said this out loud, but
ReadWriteWebis my absolute favorite blog in all the blogosphere,
and has been since they began covering all things technology-relatedin 2003 or so—it's
the emphasis on critical thinking and analysis rather than knee-jerk
"first!" responses to news and events that makes me respect them so.

However, I'm interested in your answers as
well. No, I don't aim to write a similar story as Audrey, but I do
wonder about the different answers based on the different audiences.
Audrey's readership comes from the already highly-technologically-inclined,
often found on Twitter. The ProfHacker audience in the CHE is not
necessarily so. In fact, I think it is safe to say that the majority of the
ProfHacker readership is not on Twitter and is more
technology-curious than technology-embedded (or invested).

So, I'd like to hear from you as well. In the
comments, please let us know what's the tech tool you're most
excited to take into the classroom with you this fall? (anything
hardware or software "counts," and I'll even accept analog technologies as
valid answers)

Hopefully, given your responses and Audrey's own
article from (predominantly) her own audience, there will be some
interesting food for thought on the state of technology in higher ed.

Jensen Comment
“Taking into the classroom” is a rather ambiguous
phrase that should probably read “taking into the course.” In the latter case,
something Camtasia is still on my list of important priorities for things to add
to virtually any course whether onsite or online ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5342/

YouTube added a cool feature for videos with closed
captions: you can now click on the "transcript" button to expand the entire
listing. If you click on a line, YouTube will show the excerpt from the
video corresponding to the text. If you use your browser's find feature, you
can even search inside the video. Here's an
an example of videothat includes a transcript.

Though some business schools charge for the “case studies” they develop as
teaching aids, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced today that it
is making a set of teaching materials available free online.

I forgot to mention the AAA Commons where there’s now a great deal of available,
including syllabi, tutorials, course materials, videos, and textbook
recommendations ---
http://commons.aaahq.org/pages/home

Soon many of the AAA Commons pages will be available to the world in general and
not just AAA members. Among other things this makes the resources available to
all of your students

Fun for the weekend? I just
came across an interesting site that enables creations of short (up to 10
pages currently) pop-up books. Whether or not this is useful for delivering
basic concepts to our students is debatable but is certainly another
technique to try. It also has the added fun of being an augmented reality
book, so you can use the website to read your 3-D pop book as if its resting
on your hand - neat in a very geeky way, but pedagogically I'm not so sure.

The website is at:
http://alpha.zooburst.com/index.phpand is
currently in Alpha stage testing, I wrote up a blog article on it replete
with pictures, a video and of course an accounting pop-up book:

Watch the Video showing how easy it worksI useSkypewith all of my classes
(i.e., face-2-face, blended, and online). At the beginning of each term, I
ask students to set up a Skype account and add me to their contacts list.
I then add them to my Skype contacts list. Using Skype changes the nature
of how I connect with students. We audio and video conference.
Skype messagingarchives all messages
received and sent throughout a course. I subscribe to
Skype Voicemailwhich allows me to send
voicemail message to students. Likewise, students can send me a voicemail
message. Skype recently added a new
screen sharing featuring, which works
great for one-on-one tutoring sessions. All of these Skype features (and
more) changes the nature of instructor-student interaction.

Now,
Applian Technologieshas created a
software tool that takes Skype to a whole new level. Replay
Telecorder for Skypemakes it
possible to record Skype audio and video calls. This provides a unique way
to bring “guest speakers” to the teaching-learning experience, especially to
the blended and online learning environment. Click the picture below to
view a short You Tube recording that demonstrates how to record a Skype call
that displays in a side-by-side format. The presentation is a little silly,
but illustrates what you can do with the program.

Installing and uninstalling various programs can
leave behind annoying detritus on a computer, and WinUtilities can help out
with this predicament. The application brings together a number of tools
designed to free up disk space and improve overall system performance. The
application includes a "One-Click Maintenance" feature, and visitors can
also use the application to shred files, locate duplicate files, and
schedule various maintenance tasks. This version is compatible with
computers running Windows 2003 and newer.

The Center for History and New Media at George
Mason University is always working on new projects, and their Courseware
plug-in for Word Press is worth a look. Visitors can use this latest version
of Courseware to publish class schedules, assignments, and bibliographies.
Courseware is primarily intended for use by the higher education community,
but it could easily be used in high school classrooms or other collaborative
environments. This version is compatible with all operating systems,
including Linux.

By now, everyone who reads this blog probably
understands that I teach by means of the Socratic Method. I give a list of
3-8 questions one day which serve as “conversation starters” for the next
class. In addition, our brand new Financial Accounting textbook (published
by FlatWorldKnowledge) is written entirely in a Socratic Method fashion. A
question is posed followed by an answer followed by the next logical
question and so on.

When this process works perfectly, it is because of
the questions. You must ask the proper question in order to create an
environment for discovery. How do you develop those questions? Don’t the
questions have to be something more than “when did Columbus discover
America?” or “who won the Civil War?”

I had never thought much about the creation of
questions until a few years ago. Then, I had an epiphany. I was reading the
wonderful book “What the Best College Teachers Do” by Dr. Ken Bain. Dr. Bain
and his team selected a group of outstanding college teachers from around
the country and shadowed them for a period of time to discover their
secrets. I was reading along and came to page 40 where I found this
marvelous passage: “One professor explained it this way: ‘It’s sort of
Socratic . . . You begin with a puzzle—you get somebody puzzled, and tied in
knots, and mixed up.’ Those puzzles and knots generate questions for
students, he went on to say, and then you begin to help them untie the
knots.”

You get somebody puzzled, and tied in knots, and
those puzzles and knots generate questions for students and then you begin
to help them untie the knots.

I cannot think of a better description of what I
think a teacher should strive to do. Puzzle students, tie their thinking
into knots, and then help them untie the knots.

College teachers often view themselves as conveyors
of knowledge/information. If that is the case, then a pure lecture works
fine. You convey knowledge; students try to catch it as it flies by.
However, if you want understanding, curiosity, interest, and enthusiasm, you
have to go beyond that. And, I think the “secret” to working on a higher
level is in the idea of puzzling the students, tying their thinking into
knots, and then helping them to solve those puzzles.

Let me give you an example. Next week, in my
Financial Accounting class, I will start talking about accounts receivable.
As far as I can tell, most accounting teachers tell their students to read
the chapter and assign one or more problems to work. The students then
search (often desperately) through the chapter for a reasonable facsimile
and try to duplicate that process to solve the homework assignment. In
class, the problem is worked and the students make corrections. How do you
rate the learning that occurs? Is it much different than learning to change
the oil in your car? Ask yourself: does that process generate understanding,
curiosity, interest, and enthusiasm?

Here’s how I might go about starting a discussion
about reporting accounts receivable. (My quick answers are included in
parenthesis. I obviously don’t give the answers to the students.)

1 – Your company sells 1,000 toasters near the end
of December 2009, for $60 each. All $60,000 of these sales are made on
account and collection will be in three or four months. A balance sheet is
produced on December 31, 2009. What do outside decision makes really want to
know about those accounts receivable? (The amount of cash the company will
collect.) 2 – What is the problem with what the decision makers want to know
in the above question? (Uncertainty—the accountant can only guess at the
amount of cash that will be collected.) 3 – Accountants are known for being
obsessively accurate. Will the reported number be accurate? (It is only an
estimate; no one expects an estimate to be accurate. Things like exactness
fly out the window when you start making guesses.) 4 – If the number is not
accurate, what is it? (A fair representation according to US GAAP. In other
words, the reporting follows the rules.) 5 – If there are $60,000 in
accounts receivable, how can you report any other number on the balance
sheet? Doesn’t it have to be $60,000? (The company sets up an allowance
account to reduce the asset by the amount that is anticipated as being
uncollectible.) 6 – Assume you know that $2,000 of the $60,000 will prove to
be uncollectible in 2010. Two customers will die, leave town, go bankrupt,
or the like. That is an expense for the company. Should the $2,000 expense
be recognized in 2009 or 2010? (In 2009. Expenses are recognized according
to the matching principle. Revenues from the sale of toasters are recognized
in 2009 so any related expenses [such as the bad debts] must also be
recognized in 2009.

Okay, I could go on and on but you probably get the
idea. Here is my challenge to you on a very cold and snowy Wednesday: are
you puzzling your students enough and tying their thinking into knots? Are
you helping them solve those puzzles and untie those knots? If not, you
might want to consider that strategy as a way to increase their
understanding, curiosity, interest, and enthusiasm.

Student 1
I am confident that taking this class is the most valuable
academic experience I will ever have. By far the best professor
at Richmond. Go see him after class, become his friend. Try not
to get frustrated, you may study 15 hours for a test and get a
C. Attendance policy: If you don't go, you're screwed.

Student 2
As everyone has said, Great Professor and forces you to learn
the material. I worked by far the hardest for this guy but also
learned the most. He loves to send out emails about life lessons
but some are interesting. Be ready for LOTS of work but lots of
learning too.

Student 3
Professor Hoyle is indeed the best professor in the business
school. His tests are challenging but very fair. If you have any
interest in accounting or business in general, then you must
take this class. The curve is extremely helpful so making an A
is reasonable while getting below a C is almost impossible.

Student 4
Attendance is not mandatory, but this class is one that will
kill you if you don't come to it. It is an extremely difficult
course, but interesting and worth the time. Hoyle is one of
those profs you either love or hate, and is also one of those
profs that you will remember your entire life.

--Each chapter opens
with a video to explain the importance of the
material and get the student interested in reading
the chapter before they even start.

--The material (all
17 chapters) is written in a question and answer
(Socratic) format to engage and guide the students
through each area. The subjects are broken down
into a manageable and logical size. Faculty often
complain that students do not read the textbooks. I
think this format can change that trend.

--Embedded
multiple-choice questions are included on virtually
every page to provide immediate feedback for the
students. CJ and I wrote the multiple choice
questions ourselves as we wrote the manuscript to
ensure that they would tie together logically.

--Each chapter ends
with a review video where we challenge the students
to pick the five most important areas from the
chapter. I firmly believe that students need to
learn to evaluate what they are reading. We then
provide our own “Top Five” list so that they can see
where we agree and where we disagree.

Yes,
professors do get hard copy versions.

Joe is also
behind the free CPA Review course that was once
commercial but then became a freebie to the world.
Free CPA Review Course ---
http://cpareviewforfree.com/

It's often said that less
is more. If only this were true for computer devices like printers and scanners,
which take up a lot of desktop real estate. The reality is that small, stylish,
portable versions of these gadgets are often pricey and not as functional.

This week, I reviewed two
products that unfortunately live up to that reality: a portable printer and mini
scanner that put a premium on good looks at $300 each. I've been using
Fujitsu's newest $295 mini scanner, the ScanSnap
S1300 (fujitsu.com),
and PlanOn System Solutions Inc.'s tiny $300
PrintStik PS905ME (http://3.ly/6QVS).
There are several good printers, scanners or all-in-ones that cost significantly
less or offer more functionality than these devices.

But boy, do these gadgets
look good. The Fujitsu ScanSnap collapses down to a small, rectangular box with
mirrored buttons. The PlanOn PrintStik resembles a box of aluminum foil in the
kitchen drawer—except more compact.

Both devices are small
and lightweight enough to fit in a bag or briefcase, if necessary. Either one of
these could be ported around without a problem: The PrintStik weighs 1.5 pounds
and the ScanSnap weighs twice as much at 3.08 pounds. Both fit well in a tiny
work space or on the desktops of people like me, who don't print or scan much
and don't want a device taking up a lot of space.

As is usually the case
with smaller devices that lack display screens and extra buttons, one hopes they
come with straightforward software or simply plug in and play. The Fujitsu
ScanSnap meets that requirement with software that installs on Macs or PCs and
can be used without reading complicated instructions.

The PlanOn PrintStik uses
thermal printing to produce images and characters on scrolls of paper. The
PlanOn PrintStik worked adequately as a basic black-and-white printer for
Windows PCs (it isn't Mac compatible), but fell short as a wireless printer for
smart phones. The PrintStik is meant to receive and print documents sent to it
via Bluetooth from BlackBerrys, but I found the BlackBerry program to be clumsy
and in the end, it didn't even work despite at least two dozen attempts.
PlanOn's tech support said they thought my PrintStik's Bluetooth could be
faulty, but couldn't send me a new device in time for this column.

These two devices offer
some interesting design elements. The PlanOn PrintStik PS905ME uses thermal
printing—an old technology that has been around for decades—rather than ink
cartridges, to produce images and characters by applying heat at tiny points.

The PrintStik's thermal
printing only works with special scrolls of thin, slippery paper. It comes in
packs of six rolls for $23; one roll is about 23 feet long and prints roughly 30
sheets of letter-size paper. You can opt to print only as much as a document
requires to save paper. But a long document prints out in one continuous scroll
rather than separate pages.

The PrintStik has a
rechargeable battery that lasts long enough to print about 30 pages; a wall
charger is also included. It can churn out up to three pages per minute. I can
imagine tossing this printer into my suitcase for business trips; it would also
come in handy for printing boarding passes for use at the airport, among other
things.

Documents that are
supposed to be printable from the BlackBerry with a remote-printing app include
Web pages, attachments including PDFs, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets,
JPEGs, and PowerPoint presentations. PlanOn representatives say an app will be
available for Apple's iPhone and Google's Android phones in about four or five
months; they also are working on an iPad application. Though the PrintStik's
remote-printing app for the BlackBerry is currently free, the company intends to
begin charging $30 annually for its remote-printing service this summer.

Fujitsu's ScanSnap S1300
can suck in 10 pages at once, and has two cameras that can scan the front and
back of printouts. This process can scan as many as eight dual-sided pages a
minute. Item sizes range from 2x2-inch cards to legal documents.

The ScanSnap comes with a
wall charger but also runs without being plugged into the wall: It uses a USB
cord for charging from a PC in addition to the USB cord that transfers data
between the scanner and computer.

Seconds after I scanned
documents into the ScanSnap, colorful icons appeared on my computer screen.
Choosing one of these icons let me send the documents to one of the following:
email, Word, a printer, Excel, iPhoto or Cardiris—a program that exports contact
information from scanned business cards into Address Book or Entourage;
CardMinder on Windows exports contact information to Outlook and other programs.

If you want to scan old
or precious documents, you may not like using the ScanSnap's sucking method for
scanning, in case a page gets stuck or damaged. For sensitive objects or page
scanning, the best bet is to use a flatbed scanner or all-in-one (that prints,
scans, and faxes) with a lift-up lid that scans items on a flat surface.

Though the Fujitsu
ScanSnap S1300 and PlanOn PrintStik PS905ME aren't the least expensive or the
most functional devices of their kind, they're easy to move around and take up
minimal amounts of space. For some people, that may be well worth the higher
cost.

—Edited by Walter S. Mossberg.

Question
What hand-held device can photograph close up and read aloud from books, price
labels, receipts, and newspapers?

Hint:
This device has far more uses beyond being a helper for sight impaired people.
For one thing, auditors might make use of this when detail testing.

The Intel Reader, powered by an Atom processor, is a
handheld device with a five-­megapixel camera that can read aloud any printed
text it is pointed at, including product labels, receipts, and pages from books
and newspapers. Previously, visually impaired or dyslexic people required a
desktop scanner connected to a computer to convert print into speech.
"Scan and Listen," MIT's Technology Review, December 17, 2009 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/24198/?a=f

The new software is the latest product of Google’s
research into using large collections of simulated neurons to process data
(see “10
Breakthrough Technologies 2013: Deep Learning”).
No one at Google programmed the new software with rules for how to interpret
scenes. Instead, its networks “learned” by consuming data. Though it’s just
a research project for now, Vinyals says, he and others at Google have
already begun to think about how it could be used to enhance image search or
help the visually impaired navigate online or in the real world.

Google’s researchers created the software through a
kind of digital brain surgery, plugging together two neural networks
developed separately for different tasks. One network had been trained to
process images into a mathematical representation of their contents, in
preparation for identifying objects. The other had been trained to generate
full English sentences as part of automated translation software.

When the networks are combined, the first can
“look” at an image and then feed the mathematical description of what it
“sees” into the second, which uses that information to generate a
human-readable sentence. The combined network was trained to generate more
accurate descriptions by showing it tens of thousands of images with
descriptions written by humans. “We’re seeing through language what it
thought the image was,” says Vinyals.

After that training process, the software was set
loose on several large data sets of images from Flickr and other sources and
asked to describe them. The accuracy of its descriptions was then judged
with an automated test used to benchmark computer-vision software. Google’s
software posted scores in the 60s on a 100-point scale. Humans doing the
test typically score in 70s, says Vinyals.

That result suggests Google is far ahead of other
researchers working to create scene-describing software. Stanford
researchers recently
published detailsof their own system and reported
that it scored between 40 and 50 on the same standard test.

However, Vinyals notes that researchers at Google
and elsewhere are still in the early stages of understanding how to create
and test this kind of software. When Google asked humans to rate its
software’s descriptions of images on a scale of 1 to 4, it averaged only
2.5, suggesting that it still has a long way to go.

Vinyals predicts that research on understanding and
describing scenes will now intensify. One problem that could slow things
down: though large databases of hand-labeled images have been created to
train software to recognize individual objects, there are fewer labeled
photos of more natural scenes.

Microsoft this year launched a database called
COCOto try to fix that. Google used COCO in its new
research, but it is still relatively small. “I hope other parties will chip
in and make it better,” says Vinyals.

Jensen Comment
It's a bit like captions for the hearing impaired in television shows only this
time the captions are for the blind regarding images in computer screens.

Of course authors could probably do a better job by merely describing aloud
the images they insert in there text. Some publishers now have audio versions of
their textbooks. But do they also describe each
image in the page?

This year, spruce up your teaching toolbox with some of the top education
blogs, tweets, wikis and more, as voted on by educators in the
Edublog Awards.

On these sites, you'll be able to connect with other educators, see
what's going on in classrooms around the world and find out what technology
tools you can use in your classroom.

Best individual blog

Winner:
Free
Technology for Teachers
Google certified teacher Richard
Byrne reviews free technology resources and shows educators how they
can integrate those resources into their teaching. He also won the best
resource sharing blog award.

Second Runner Up:
SCC English
The English Department of St. Columba's College in Whitechurch, Dublin
16, Ireland posts news, poems, drama, essays, podcasts, book
recommendations and more.

Best new blog

Winner:
Kirsten Winkler
Kirsten Winkler started blogging about online education in January and
takes readers on a quest to find better education.

First Runner Up:
Look At My Happy
Rainbow
A male kindergarten teacher shares stories from his classroom in Maine.
As for the blog title, one of his students shouted, "Look at my happy
rainbow!" one day after he drew a rainbow with four or five crayons in
one hand.

Second Runner Up:
Teach
Paperless
Shelly Blake-Plock shows educators how to teach with interactive
technology and provide real-world learning opportunities for their
students.

First Runner Up:
Mrs.
Yollis' Classroom Blog
Third graders from Linda Yollis' class learn and share what they're
learning on their blog.

Second Runner Up:
English With
Rosa
Rosa Fernández Sánchez helps her students from Coruña, Galicia, Spain,
practice English.

Best student blog

Winner:
Civil War
Sallie
A Boyd's Bear named Sallie Ann travels to classrooms, museums and
battlefields to learn about the United States Civil War, and then shares
what she learns on her blog. The person who created Sallie Ann is a
student from St. Patrick School in Carlisle, Pa.

Second Runner Up:
Moo
A college student majoring in photography shares photos and commentary.
She also happens to be the daughter of
The
Scholastic Scribe, which earned first runner up in the best teacher
blog category.

Best resource sharing blog

Winner:
Free
Technology for Teachers
Voted the best resource sharing blog for the second straight year.
Google certified teacher Richard
Byrne reviews free technology resources and shows educators how they
can integrate those resources into their teaching. He also won the best
individual blog award.

First Runner Up:
Larry
Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day
Larry Ferlazzo teaches English Language Learners and native English
speakers in Sacramento, Calif.. He provides links to sites that help
educators teach English to non-native speakers.

Most influential blog post

Winner: "Heads
in the Cloud" from Anseo.net
This post shows how one school uses cloud computing through Google Apps
as a communication tool for the staff and board of management.

Joint First Runners Up:"This,
This, That" from Dear
Kaia and Skyelar
Three-year-old Kaia explored the desert near her home in Qatar, took
photos of what she saw and created a photo essay that she posted on her
blog. She wrote the post with her dad, teacher Jabiz Raisdana, who then
sent it out to his Twitter network.

The link made its way into the Twitter stream of technology teacher
William
Chamberlain, who asked the eighth grade students in his class to
comment on the blog post.

The story doesn't end there. The eigth-graders had some questions about
Kaia and her dad's life in Doha, Qatar, so Raisdana skyped into their
class. The students also created video comments that they sent to Kaia (read
the complete story on Raisdana's blog).

On top of that, professor John Strange from the University of South
Alabama saw the post and passed it on to the students in his educational
media class. They commented on Kaia's photo essay as well and wrote more
than 50 blog posts in response to the photo essay (read
this part of the story in Raisdana's words).

Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet-based discussion

First Runner Up:
Blogworthy Tweets
English teacher Claudia Ceraso from Buenos Aires, Argentina, publishes
some of her tweets on the blog
ELT notes.

Second Runner Up:
#teachertuesday
Every Tuesday on Twitter, educators and others recommend teachers to
follow through the hashtag #teachertuesday.

Best teacher blog

Winner:
Two
Writing Teachers
Ruth Ayres and Stacey Shubitz share their tools, ideas and experiences
with educators who teach kids how to write.

First Runner Up:
The
Scholastic Scribe
A high school journalism teacher writes about life inside and outside of
her District of Columbia classroom. She is the mother of the college
student behind
Moo, who earned first runner up in the best student blog category.

Second Runner Up:
Cool Cat
Teacher
Vicki A. Davis from Camilla, Georgia, shares her experiences with
technology as well as how students are collaborating globally through
activities including the
Flat Classroom Project.

Best librarian / library blog

Winner:
Never Ending Search
Joyce Valenza writes about technology, research, search engines and more
from Springfield Township High School in Oreland, Pa. Check out the
school's cool
virtual library.

First Runner Up:
Bright Ideas
The School Library Association of Victoria run this blog, where school
library staff can share how they use the latest research tools in their
libraries.

Second Runner Up:
Library Media Tech Musings
Gwyneth A. Jones passes on education links and resources, among other
things, with a sprinkle of snark, as she puts it.

Best educational tech support blog

Winner:
iLearn Technology
Technology teacher Kelly Tenkely wants to help teachers "fall in love
with technology the way that their students have," and she does that by
giving them ideas for how to integrate new technology into their
classrooms.

First Runner Up:
Langwitches
This blog follows Silvia Tolisano as she discovers the magic of learning
on her journey as a technology integration facilitator.

Second Runner Up:
Life Feast
Ana Maria Menezes shares what she's learning about using Internet tools
to enhance her classes and change up the daily routine for her EFL
students in Brazil.

First Runner Up:
Angela Maiers
After a 20-year career in education, Angela Maiers became an independent
consultant who focuses on literacy education, and through her blog, she
encourages teachers to be great learners.

Best educational use of audio

Winner:
Xyleme Voices
Podcasts
A podcast library on the evolution of training, featuring interviews
with top industry analysts, consultants and practitioners in the field
of learning.

First Runner Up:
Musical Blogies
Ignacio Valdés posts audio and video of his students, who play music
from a secondary education institution in the Spanish principality of
Asturia.

Second Runner Up:
My Audio School
Children can download more than 150 classic books and listen to more
than 200 radio and television broadcasts on My Audio School. While this
Web site was originally designed to help dyslexic students, it can be
used for any students.

Best educational use of video / visual

First Runner Up:
The Longfellow Ten
Middle school students create and share stop-motion films that depict
academic terms and concepts. They're definitely not boring.

Second Runner Up:
Inanimate Alice
Through text, sound, images and games, writer Kate Pullinger and digital
artist Chris Joseph tell the story of a girl named Alice and her
imaginary digital friend, Brad. Pullinger teaches creative writing and
new media for De Montfort University in Leicester, United Kingdom.

Best educational wiki

First Runner Up:
Soar 2
New Heights
A fourth-grade class shares books and themes that they enjoy.

Second Runner Up:
HUMS3001:
Censorship and Responsibility
From the University of South Wales, the students in Ben Miller's class
on censorship and responsibility work together to build the pages in
this wikispace.

Best educational use of a social networking service

Winner:
English
Companion Ning
English teachers help each other on this network, which high school
English teacher and author Jim Burke created.

First Runner Up:
EFL Classroom
2.0
This Ning provides a space for English language teachers and students to
ask questions, share answers and find resources to help them learn.

Second Runner Up:
RSC Access and
Inclusion Ning
The Regional Support Centre for North and East Scotland allows educators
to discuss, share and join with other colleagues as they work with
learners who need additional support in higher education.

Lifetime achievement

Winner:
Karl Fisch
Karl Fisch has been teaching for 21 years and is currently director of
technology at
Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colo. He was previously a middle
and high school math teacher.

First Runner Up:
Will Richardson
Will Richardson is the "learner in chief" at Connective Learning and
author of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for
Classrooms.

Second Runner Up:
Larry
Ferlazzo
Larry Ferlazzo teaches English Language Learners and native English
speakers in Sacramento, Calif. On his blog, he provides links to sites
that help educators teach English to non-native speakers.

You're in a meeting. You and your team identify a
great new business opportunity. If you can launch in 60 days, a rich new
market segment will be open for your product or service. The action plan is
developed. Everything's a go.

And then you come down to earth. You need new
computer equipment, which takes weeks, or months, to install. You also need
new software, which adds more weeks or months. There's no way to meet the
timeframe required by the market opening. You are stymied by your
organization's lack of IT agility.

Or, you could have the experience
the New York Timeshad when it needed to convert
a large number of digital files to a format
suitable to serve up over the web. After the inevitable "it will take a lot
of time and money to do this project," one of their engineers went to the
Amazon Web Services cloud, created 20 compute instances (essentially,
virtual servers), uploaded the files, and converted them all over the course
of one weekend.

Total cost? $240.
This example provides a sense of why cloud computing is transforming the
face of IT, with the potential to deliver real business value. The rapid
availability of compute resources in a cloud computing environment enables
business agility — the dexterity for businesses to quickly respond to
changing business conditions with IT-enabled offerings.

Notwithstanding the fact that IT seems to always
have the latest, greatest thing on its mind, cloud computing has the entire
IT industry excited, with companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, Google
and others investing billions of dollars in this new form of computing. And
in terms of IT users,
Gartner recently named cloud computing as the
second most important technology focus area for 2010.

But what is cloud computing exactly? Why is it
different than what went before? And why should you care? While there are
many definitions of cloud computing, I look to the definition of cloud
computing from the National Institute of Standards and Testing (NIST), part
of the US Department of Commerce. In its cloud computing definition,
NIST identifies five characteristics of cloud computing,
which include:

on-demand self service, which allows business
units to get the computing resources they need without having to go
through IT for equipment .

broad network access, which enables
applications to be built in ways that align with how businesses operate
today - mobile, multi-device, etc.

resource pooling, which allows for pooling of
computing resources are to serve multiple consumers

rapid elasticity, which allow for quick
scalability or downsizing of resources depending on demand

and measured service, which means that
business units only pay for the compute resources they use. Translation:
IT costs match business success.

To offer a concrete example of how cloud computing
agility enables organizations to respond to business opportunity, let me
share the experience of one of our clients, the Silicon Valley Education
Foundation. Its Lessonopoly application allows 13,000 teachers throughout
Silicon Valley to collaborate on lesson plans. NBC approached SVEF just
before this year's Winter Olympics with science-focused lesson plans
centered around the science behind the experience of Olympic athletes (e.g.,
the loads placed on a skier's legs as she swerves around a slalom gate).

One concern SVEF had was whether or not Lessonopoly
could handle the likely application load increase. There were only a few
days before the start of the Olympics, which would initiate heavy use of
these lesson plans. The group had migrated the application to Amazon Web
Services a few months earlier, and they were able to quickly shut down the
small machine Lessonopoly was running on and bring it back up on a larger
instance with three times the computing capacity of the original.

It's a cliché to say that business is changing at
an ever-increasing pace, but one of the facts about clichés is they often
contain truth. The deliberate pace of traditional IT is just not suited for
today's hectic business environment. Cloud computing's agility is a much
better match for constantly mutating business conditions. To evaluate
whether your business opportunities could be well-served by leveraging the
agility of cloud computing, download the
HyperStratus Cloud Computing Agility Checklist, which
outlines ten conditions that indicate a business case for taking advantage
of the agility of cloud computing.

Bernard Golden is CEO of HyperStratus, a Silicon Valley-based cloud
computing consultancy that works with clients in the US and throughout the
world. Contact him at bernard.golden@hyperstratus.com

Winner: "Heads
in the Cloud" from Anseo.net
This post shows how one school uses cloud computing through Google Apps as a
communication tool for the staff and board of management.

You may have seen the video below (it is four
minutes long). It had a lot of impact on me when I was creating our new
Financial Accounting textbook. The video was apparently created by the
students you see and really made me think about the state of education
today. As far as I am concerned, education is expensive and, too often, both
boring and inefficient. I wanted to be part of the solution rather than part
of the problem. As a result, I helped design and create this new type of
Financial Accounting textbook.

As I have mentioned previously, a few years ago I
wrote a free on-line teaching tips book (https://facultystaff.richmond.edu/~jhoyle/).
I was lucky, a few people read it and told other people and then I got a
very nice review in the Chronicle of Higher Education. As a result, I
started getting emails from around the world about teaching. That was
wonderful.

One day I received an email from a professor in London who said something
like: “you don’t know me but I have read your teaching tips book and have a
quote that I think you are going to love.” And, he was absolutely
correct—this is one of my two or three favorite quotes about teaching.
Whenever I give a teaching presentation, I always use this quote to explain
what I believe is the true secret for becoming a better teacher. It is the
best piece of advice that I can give any teacher who wants to improve.

"Teaching does not come from years of doing it. It actually comes from
thinking about it."

I get pretty decent teaching evaluations from my students and I have won a
few awards. Whenever anyone asks me how I managed to do that, I always say:
“I think about this stuff a lot. Whether it is 6:00 a.m. when I wake up or
10:30 p.m. when I go to bed, teaching and my students and how to help them
learn is always floating around in my head.”

So, today, I decided to tell you about what has been floating around in my
head recently.

It seems to me that college education in my lifetime has focused on the
conveyance of information. One content expert (the teacher) conveys
information to a group of individuals who want (or are required) to gain a
bit of that expertise. Despite what we might say, that process has not
changed too radically in the last four decades since I was a college
student.

However, with the Internet, Google, Bing and the like, information is
readily available to most individuals at any time. It is hard to find a
factual question that you cannot answer in less than one minute using a
search engine. What then is the future purpose of a college education (other
than the acquisition of a very expensive diploma)? If there is no longer a
huge need for the conveyance of information from one generation to the next
because it is so readily available, what are we doing? Don’t we need to know
that before we even start the first class?

Do we who teach in college think about that question enough or just try to
ignore it as best we can?

When I give teaching presentations, we work on developing “fly-on-the-wall”
philosophies. What the heck is that? I ask the members of the audience to
picture the course that is their favorite to teach. Then think of the final
day of the semester when the students file out of the room for the last
time. I ask each of the teachers to pretend they are a fly on the wall right
above the door. If you were that fly on the wall, what would you want to
hear from your students as they exited for the final time?

--The teacher sure conveyed a lot of information??
--I certainly took some great notes this semester??
--I memorized a lot of material so I could pass a test??

From my experience, a lot of teachers teach as if that is their goal. But,
surely that cannot be the reason we became teachers. In 2010, doesn’t it
have to be something more than that? And, if the answer is Yes, then what is
the purpose of a college course?

I can tell you my own personal fly-on-the-wall philosophy but I am not sure
that I am not ready for some change in it. So, if you have suggestions, let
me know.

Here is my mine. On the last day of class, I would love to hear by students
say:

“I never thought I could work so hard. I never thought I could learn so
much. I never thought I could think so deeply. And, it was actually fun.”

In Western Civilization class at The John Carroll
School, freshmen grab plastic chairs from a stack against the wall, gather
around the room in different areas and jump online with their tablet PCs.

Using a class hashtag, they respond to questions
that teacher Shelly Blake-Plock posts on Twitter. He projects their
discussions on the classroom wall so that everyone can easily track what's
going on.

Then, instead of pulling out textbooks to study
ancient Rome, the students check out primary sources online such as BBC's
interactive history section or the Metropolitan Museum of Art timelines that
integrate text and artwork. As jazz music plays in the background, they pull
up a document and use Diigo to annotate the text as well as share
annotations.

They'll keep scouring the web for sites on ancient
Rome and share the links they find on Twitter, then pick the best ones to
post on their class wiki. Afterward, students look for correlations between
the history they're studying and current events that media sources post on
Twitter.

At the end of the 45-minute class, Blake-Plock
throws out another question on Twitter that the students use as a guide to
write a post on their personal blogs that night. The next day, they read and
comment on their classmates' blogs and start the process all over again.

These students are learning through technology and
directing their own learning in the process. Here's how educators around the
country are empowering their students to do the same.

Focus on education At Charlotte Country Day School
in North Carolina, Technology Integration Specialist Tim Moxley works with
teachers to incorporate smartboards, document cameras and netbook computers
into their lessons. To successfully blend tech tools into their instruction,
teachers need to have a combination of technological, pedagogical and
content knowledge (TPACK), which is a model that Punya Mishra and Matthew J.
Koehler of Michigan State University researched.

Educators took on the job of providing a quality
education, and a piece of that quality education is teaching kids how to use
and become comfortable with tech tools.

"When you work in education, the end goal is what’s
best for the student," Moxley said. "If using a piece of technology is gonna
improve the student outcome in some way, then it’s worth it.”

Students are turned on 24 hours a day, whether
they're surfing the web, watching TV or playing the Nintendo Wii, said
Technology Integration Specialist Susan Jenkins, and they need to be engaged
in order to learn. Engaging students often means using technology to teach,
if it can help meet a learning goal.

“We don’t want to put it out there just because
it’s a cool thing to have," said Jenkins, who works in Bullitt County Public
Schools in Shepherdsville, Ky. " We want a purpose for it.”

Learn about the tools Jenkins helps teachers find
that purpose by providing in-service training once a month as well as
meeting with them on an appointment basis. While she does show them how new
tools work, she also gives them ideas about how they can use them to help
students learn.

“As we’re training them to use the tool, we try to
train them with the integration side mixed in," Jenkins said.

In addition to learning from other people in their
school district, teachers can learn from people they're connected to on
Twitter, said Kyle Pace, an instructional/consumer technology specialist
with Lee's Summit School District in Missouri. He finds plenty of resources
from educators, particularly those who use the hashtag edchat, and shares
them with co-workers and teachers in his area.

“If you start to think, ‘Well, I’ve seen all there
is to see with this kind of tool,’ something new comes out or the next day
you learn about something new,” Pace said. “We’re fortunate in our district
that instructional technology is a huge focus, and I think it just has to
remain a huge professional development focus at the district and at the
building level.”

Back in North Carolina, some teachers tell Moxley
that they are computer-illiterate and are horrible with technology. He
reminds them that they wouldn't accept that response from a child who tells
them he isn't good at math, so he won't accept that as a response for them.
When he puts it in those terms, they are more receptive to learning about
new tools.

He sits in on grade-level planning meetings, and
based on what he hears, he looks for resources that might work with the
lessons that teachers have coming up.

“I try to deemphasize the technology itself and
just try to get them to see it as a tool that hopefully will enhance the
lesson in some way,” Moxley said.

Mix tech into lessons When language arts teacher
Heather Mason plans a lesson, she starts by figuring out what she wants her
students to learn in her class at Jefferson Middle School in Merritt Island,
Fla. Then she thinks about what tools could help accomplish her goal.

And as she wrote on her blog, the technology
doesn't have to be new to work. She uses tools such as Post-it notes,
highlighters and personal whiteboards to engage her students.

Pencils are also effective tools, and they're the
focus of John Spencer's blog Adventures in Pencil Integration. Set in 1897,
the blog posts tell the story of a fictional character named Tom Johnson,
whose small school district starts paper and pencil integration initiatives
to prepare students for the 20th century.

Through satire, he paints a picture of the hype and
the paranoia that comes with new technology. Back in his classroom at Raúl
Castro Middle School in Phoenix, he teaches his students to identify with
both extremes.

“I want them to be both absolute critics of
technology and also people who absolutely embrace it," Spencer said. "And I
know that’s a really idealistic kind of view to have, but I want them to be
both.”

He helps them become both by starting conversations
in his multimedia authoring/publishing class that force students to think
critically about what they're doing and why they're doing it.

Two universities--Kean University in Union, NJ and
Emory University in Atlanta, GA--have gone public with their use of
Datawatch's Monarch data mining software to teach students how to perform
business intelligence work.

Kean professor Beth Brilliant introduced Monarch to
graduate students of her accounting information systems (AIS) and auditing
information system classes.

"I have been using Monarch for years as a
[certified public accountant] and swear by it," said Brilliant. "For
example, I use Monarch to quickly find any bank discrepancies. As I work for
a law firm with client trust accounts, this is extremely important, as all
accounts must balance to the penny. I am able to reconcile all the accounts
in minutes thanks to Monarch, picking up differences in checks from pennies
to hundreds of thousands of dollars."

Brilliant added, "My department has also become
more efficient with the use of Monarch, saving hours by importing data into
the accounting system electronically vs. manually. Reports that I receive
from vendors are saved as PDF files, which are mined using Monarch. The data
is then extracted and imported into our accounting system. This not only
saves time but it removes the risk of manual data input errors."

"I rely on Monarch to ensure data quality and to
ensure I know exactly where company data is coming from, with no need to
rely on the company's accounting and IT departments," she explained.
"Monarch is an excellent resource for auditors and accountants, and well
worth including Monarch within my AIS coursework."

Robert Gross teaches a graduate course on managing
healthcare databases at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory. The
course is part of the curriculum for the university's master of public
health degree.

"Most of my students are physicians and other
working healthcare providers, middle managers and public health agency
leaders," said Gross. "The students are non-technical, yet must understand
how to independently gather, sift, sort, and work effectively with public
and private healthcare information sources. We address issues including
effective data access strategies, how to ensure data quality, comply fully
with HIPAA, and actively work with healthcare data using Excel, Access, and
several statistical analysis products."

Continued in article

Bentley College Students Will Make Microloans to Small Businesses
Perhaps this is also an opportunity for accounting students to advise loan
recipients on accounting, software, and taxes. There is precedent here for
students in colleges that used to administer Small Business Administration
grants. Years ago at the University of Maine I supervised some students who in
turn were assisting grant recipients with accounting. In one humorous instance,
the students could not find the recipients. The SBA had given a grant to a
startup company to make patio furniture in much the same manner as birch-bark
canoes are made using ash wood and birch bark. Once the recipients got the money
for their chain saws and trucks, they were nowhere to be found. Turns out all
they wanted the money for was to help them steal wood to sell to the paper
companies. Such will also be the risk of microlending by college students.

New Student-Run Initiative Brings Microlending to
the Greater Boston Area An honors finance class at Bentley University has
paved the way for an innovative financing initiative: a domestic microcredit
organization that will fuel economic and community development by providing
loans of $1,500 to $6,000 to local entrepreneurs at or below the poverty
level.

The Bentley Microcredit Initiative (BMI) is the
result of a course, Seminar in Micro Lending, which debuted in spring 2008.
The mission of the BMI is to integrate microfinance into the Bentley
community and to promote community development through education and
innovation in microlending activities. The class and the BMI are the
brainchild of Finance Professor and BMI Director Roy Wiggins. "The fund is
something I really thought could be viable here at Bentley," says Wiggins.
"Since it's student-run, it will provide hands-on banking experience while
also furthering the Bentley mission to send future business leaders into the
world who are socially responsible."

Microcredit or microlending refers to modest-sized
loans for poverty-level recipients who may not qualify for funds at
traditional financial institutions. The practice gained public attention in
2006, when Grameen Bank and its founder, Muhammad Yunus, received the Nobel
Peace Prize for their work in microfinance.

Students enrolled in Seminar in Micro Lending
developed a working model for the BMI after researching microfinance
successes and failures both abroad and domestically to create a framework
that could operate in Greater Boston. The fund is being financed by
donations from alumni and parents and has an initial equity line of $100,000
on its way to a total loan portfolio of $300,000. The Bentley Microcredit
Initiative will identify potential loan applicants by tapping into existing
Bentley relationships with community organizations. "One of the attractive
things about this venture is that it will be utilizing Bentley's academic
resources," says Bentley President Gloria Larson. "We are essentially
marrying Bentley's foundation in service and business to help address a
societal issue. We hope the Microcredit Initiative will become a part of
Bentley's legacy." BENTLEY UNIVERSITY is a leader in business education.
Centered on teaching and research in business and related professions,
Bentley blends the breadth and technological strength of a university with
the core values and student focus of a close-knit campus.

The Epsilen Environment is the result of six years
of research and development within the Purdue School of Engineering and
Technology at IUPUI. Epsilen Products and Services are commercially
available through BehNeem LLC, the holding company created in Indiana to
commercialize, market and further develop the Epsilen Environment. The New
York Times is an equity and strategic partner in the company.

A 2008 addition to the above history site came to my attention in a
loose-card advertisement for Epsilen Enviroment that came in the November 3,
2008 edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Free ePortfolios
Basic ePortfolio accounts are free for all registered students and faculty
of U.S. colleges and universities. An Epsilen ePortfolio can be created in
minutes and be used throughout one’s academic career, during
professional life, and even into retirement. The free Epsilen ePortfolio
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Create and maintain a professional ePortfolio

Engage in professional and social networking

Showcase scholarly work and other documents in a wide range of
formats

Develop and share resumes

Store and share files/objects

Use Epsilen e-mail, blog, wiki, and other communication and
collaboration tools

Create and participate in professional collaboration groups

Access to online
courses and trainings using the Epsilen Global Learning System (GLS)
courseware.

Produce a personal ePortfolio Web site with profile, photos and
video

Receive an automated weekly Epsilen status report
that lets you know about those that have visited your “corner”,
share similar research, teaching, internship or consulting
interests.

Exploratory
Institutional Memberships
The Exploratory Membership is an easy and cost-effective option for colleges
and universities, schools, districts and state systems to explore and
experience the features of Epsilen, the next generation of learning and
networking software. Upon payment of an annual
membership fee, the following features are available to Exploratory
Members:

Administrative
account to brand, monitor, and maintain internal ePortfolio accounts of
your students ,faculty and alumnae

Delivery of 12
online courses or training using Epsilen’s Global Learning System (GLS),
with the option to incorporate New York Times content described below

Direct access to the
Epsilen helpdesk

A hosted Web-based
solution that requires no, or little, institutional IT support

Ability to upgrade
to other licensed services (see below)

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Epsilen with campus SIS (see below)

Ability to cross
list courses across institutions, departments, and schools

Annual Exploratory Memberships begin at
$5,000 for campuses with up to 2,000 students. Click here for
more pricing information and order application.

New York Times Knowledge
NetworkNew York Times
Knowledge (NYTKnowledge Network) offers New York Times content to
complement faculty-designed courses served dynamically in customizable
templates through Epsilen’s Global Learning System. New York Times
content is aggregated by subject and easily selected and incorporated into
lessons by faculty and the interactive learning environment. NYTKnowledge
Network provides access to a repository of Times archives back to
1851 Times articles, special issues sections, multimedia features,
and synchronous and asynchronous contact with correspondents, resulting in
an extraordinary integrated learning environment that supports hybrid or
online offerings.

The New York Times
Knowledge Network also offers the opportunity to participate in Webcasts
with the Times correspondents and other subject matter experts.
These can be included in traditional courses, or offered by your institution
as stand-alone life-long learning experiences with comprehensive continuing
education programs designed by the New York Times.

NYT Knowledge Network Provides:

A rich
repository of archived content back to 1851

Access to other
major content providers

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content

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and graphs

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range of content aggregated by subject and easily integrated to
support your teaching objectives.

Student Learning Matrix
Programs, departments, and schools within a campus may create unlimited
student learning matrices to be used by students through an automated
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Student Learning Matrix membership fee is based on the number of students in
the program or institution. Click here
for more information and online membership application.

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management system that enables students and instructors to easily
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collaboration, and utilize peer review technology

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A hosted
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The annual GLS membership fee is based on the
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access to NYTKnowledge Network content. Charter members receive special
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Click Here for
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application.

Questions
How can you turn your email messages into free video messages?
How can you video conference calls?

For those of you in
the American Accounting Association, I call your attention to a new
Teaching Resource called TokBox submitted to the Commons by accounting
professor Rick Little. You do not need to go to the Commons for some of
Rick’s links passed on below. I thank Rick for sharing this teaching
resource.

AAA Members

Please go to the AAA
Commons at least once each day ---
http://commons.aaahq.org
For Teaching and Research Resources, Click on the menu bar item called
“Roles”
Rick’s posting is called “Thinking Outside the Box”
You might want to clidk on Rick’s picture to see his interesting profile
(e.g., with Grant Thornton and as a local CPA before getting his PhD in
accounting)

If you are trying to
gather a group of people for a conference or chat, TokBox may be just
the perfect thing. Visitors can use the video chat feature to include up
to 20 participants in a call, import contacts from Gtalk and Facebook,
and also text chat with other people during the call. Also, visitors can
share YouTube videos and files. This version is compatible with all
computers running Windows 2000 and newer.

Last year, TokBox
decided to drop the video messaging feature of its service and focus
on multi-party video conferencing and chat. I told them that I felt
they were making a big mistake with this service change.

I replaced TokBox
with two other services (i.e., Eyejot and YouTube). Eyejot is a
video email messaging service. YouTube added an option that makes it
possible to upload a video and keep it private but shareable.

I'm using Eyejot
with all my students. It's working very well and students really
like it. I've been able to integrate Eyejot into Blackboard.
Students can send me a video message of up to 5 minutes in length.
Soon, Eyejot is supposed to increase the message time from 5 minutes
to 10 minutes.

"15 Tools to Make Your PC a Multimedia Powerhouse: Enjoy your
video and audio collections to the fullest with the help of these free and
low-cost downloads," by Preston Gralla, PC World via The Washington Post,
October 30, 2008 ---
Click Here

Your
PC has become the greatest entertainment device
ever created, but you wouldn't know that judging by the software that ships
with the machine. Bundled media players, and related software for playing
and managing audio and video, tend to be underwhelming at best.

We've assembled 15 of our
favorite video and audio applications, all of which can handle just
about any job you can throw at them. The vast majority of these
downloads are completely free, and the others offer no-cost trials.

They'll help you download YouTube videos to your PC, or convert videos
to formats that you can view on handheld devices. They'll play any audio
and video formats you can find. They'll make you into a DJ and allow you
to create your own customized mixes, too. So if you want to get the most
out of the entertainment device on your desk, read on--and start
downloading. (And if you want to access all of these tools in one
convenient place, hop to our
audio and video downloads collection.)

Video

Want to download YouTube
videos to your computer, convert video files to formats that you can view on
portable players, find the best videos online, or watch TV from around the
world? We have software that does all that, and a lot more.

TubeMe

How many times have you
watched a YouTube video and wished that you could save it to your hard drive
for future viewing? With this free software, you can save YouTube videos as
.flv files; afterward, you can watch the videos in any multimedia software
that supports the .flv format (such as FLV Player or VLC Media Player, both
discussed below). Before downloading the videos, you get a full description
of them, as well.

Be aware that using this
program can be a bit confusing. Make sure to click the Download path
button, at the bottom of the screen, to tell the program where to download
your videos. And to download the video, you'll have to copy and paste the
YouTube URL into the program. After that, click the icon with a small plus
sign; it looks grayed-out, as if it were nonfunctional, but it does work.
Once you've added the link, you can download the video. You can also put
multiple videos in a list, and download them all at once.

FLV Player
If you've downloaded YouTube videos using TubeMe or another downloader, or
if you've collected other files in the .flv format, you may run into a
problem: Many media players, including Windows Media Player, can't handle
them. FLV Player is a straightforward media player designed to play .flv
files exclusively. To access a video, press , browse to the file, and open
it, or else double-click the .flv file from inside Windows Explorer. You can
also drag and drop files into the player. The software even handles multiple
.flv files: Simply drag several files to the program, and the app plays each
video in its own window.

You can control video
playback through the usual controls, or with a variety of keyboard
shortcuts. You can also toggle between full-screen mode and normal mode.
Note that you may run into problems installing the software on Windows
Vista. If that happens to you, right-click the installation file and choose
Run as Administrator. That should solve the problem.

Playing
video these days is no longer confined to your PC--countless other devices
can play video as well, including handheld devices and music players, mobile
phones, and the PlayStation Portable (PSP). The problem, though, is that if
you've downloaded videos to your PC, they might not be in the formats your
devices require.

Continued in article

Do It Yourself Interactive Whiteboard (about $60 instead of over $1,000)

Mr. Lee encourages innovators to ask themselves,
"Would providing 80 percent of the capability at 1 percent of the cost be
valuable to someone?" If the answer is yes, he says, pay attention. Trading
relatively little performance for substantial cost savings can generate what
Mr. Lee calls "surprising and often powerful results both scientifically and
socially."

As evidence, he might point to a do-it-yourself
interactive whiteboard, another of his Wiimote innovations. Interactive
whiteboards, which in commercial form generally sell for more than $1,000,
make it possible to control a computer by tapping, writing or drawing on an
image of the desktop that has been projected onto a screen. Mr. Lee's
version can be built with roughly $60 in parts and free open-source software
downloadable from his Web site.

Some 700,000 people, many of them teachers, have
downloaded the software, Mr. Lee says. Much more expensive whiteboards may
offer more features and better image resolution, but Mr. Lee's version is
adequate for most classroom applications.

This came as part of a
subscription to a technology newsletter, I haven't tried this product
myself. Scott Bonacker CPA, Springfield, MO]

As anIT professional,
chances are good that you have lots of detailed
information that you have to keep track of in order to do your job
effectively and efficiently. You probably have a multitude of documents
stored in a multitude of folders on your hard disk. Using a series of
documents and folders to store all your information is a pretty logical way
of doing things, especially when used in combination with
Vista’s Search tool and Saved searches
feature, keeping track of all that information is pretty easy. However, it
could be better — especially if all that information could be made available
in one place.

Well, I recently discovered a very nice document
manager called Maple from Crystal Office
Systemsthat runs perfectly on Windows
Vista and produces what is essentially a document database. In this edition
of the
Windows Vista Report, I’ll introduce you to
Maple and show you how to use it manage your document collection.

Getting Maple

You can download Maple from the Crystal Office
Systems Web site. Once you download it,
installation is a snap and you’ll be ready begin creating you custom
document database in no time. You can download and try Maple for 30 days at
no cost. A single-user license is $21.95.

When you access the Crystal Office Systems Web
site, you’ll also notice that there is another version of this document
manager called Maple Professional, which provides a set of advanced
features. You’ll also find free reader called Maple Reader that will allow
other users to view any document database created with either Maple or Maple
Professional.

We are sending you
this email because you are an author of material in the MERLOT collection (www.merlot.org).
As you know, MERLOT is an international consortium of higher education
institutions, professional societies, digital libraries, and corporations
who support educational improvement through technology. Last year, MERLOT
had more than 1,000,000 visits from people searching for reusable
learning materials to incorporate into their teaching and learning. As
MERLOT continues to grow (over 20,000 materials accessed by more than 62,000
members, growing at 1200+ new members monthly), participants are
increasingly concerned about legal issues related to the reuse of online
materials.

We recognize the
efforts of people like you who have created learning materials and have
agreed to share your work through MERLOT. To protect and guide members of
the MERLOT community, we have adopted the intellectual property policies of
the increasingly popular consortium, Creative Commons (www.creativecommons.org).
We are doing this to:

·Encourage
creators of online materials to share their work with others who might wish
to reuse the materials.

·Ensure that
contributions of online materials by MERLOT members are protected from
misuse and abuse.

We would like to encourage you, as a developer of online materials, to
declare Creative Commons licenses for all your material so that
others don’t use your work in ways counter to your intentions. Creative
Commons provides an easy process for defining licenses; it also provides
HTML code you can copy directly to your website to let others know what
license applies to your work. To easily select the license of your choice,
go to
www.creativecommons.org/license.

If you wish to
have a Creative Commons license displayed with your MERLOT digital
content and you are the original contributor of your material to the MERLOT
collection, you may add the Creative Commons information yourself. You may
also send an email to the MERLOT Webmaster (webmaster@merlot.org),
indicating the title of your material in MERLOT and the Creative Commons
license you would like to display with the description of your material.
If you aren’t sure which license to use, we suggest the Creative Commons
license that allows others to reuse and alter your work, but only if they
provide attribution to you as the author and only if they reuse it for non
commercial purposes
(Creative
Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license).

Many professors who teach online complain that they
have no way of seeing whether their far-away students are following the
lectures — or whether the students have fallen asleep at their desks. But
researchers at the University of California at San Diego say they have a
solution. They recently tested a system that can detect facial expressions
of online students and determine when they find the material difficult, so
that cues could be sent to the professors telling them to slow down.

In the experiment, eight subjects were shown short
video clips of lectures while a Web cam tracked their facial expressions —
looking for smiles, blinks, raised eyebrows, and the like. The subjects were
then asked to report how difficult they found each section, and to take a
quiz on the material. Mr. Whitehill says that the system correctly detected
when students were having trouble (the most reliable indicator: students
blinked less when they were struggling to understand).

The system could be used to give valuable feedback
to professors teaching online, says Mr. Whitehill. “It’s not going to be
perfect by any means,” he says, but it’s better than no student feedback at
all. “Professors say that they can’t see the students. This could do it for
them automatically.”

Microsoft has decided to enlarge a service of keen
interest to colleges, even as the company last week
dumpedanother offering used by higher education,
its Live Search Books program. Now
Live@edu,the free Web-based e-mail and online
collaboration program for students and alumni, is getting much larger
inboxes, the ability to handle bigger attached files, true shared calendars,
and the chance for colleges to block student e-mail containing words they
deem offensive, the company announced today.

Tired of the 5 gigabyte inbox? Live@edu now offers
accounts with 10 gigabytes, and the capacity to handle attachments up to 20
megabytes in size, says Bruce Gabrielle, senior product manager for the
service. The boost is because the company has decided that, in addition to
handing campuses Microsoft Hotmail accounts (with university-based e-mail
addresses), it will offer accounts on the more powerful Microsoft Exchange
Web access system. That gives users access to Windows programs like Outlook,
with e-mail, full calendars, and a contact list.

It’s a solution used by many businesses, and
Microsoft has been quietly offering it, in a form called
Exchange Labs,to a few educational institutions
since last fall. Drexel University, Hinds Community College, and the
Colorado Community College system are some that have tried it.

With Exchange Labs, users at the same university
can see one another’s calendars to set up meetings. E-mail tracking is
enabled, so students can see whether a term paper was delivered to a
professor’s inbox. They can also push e-mail to cell phones. (And they can
use Exchange to wipe data from those phones if they happen to lose them.)
Exchange Labs also gives university officials the ability to set up filters,
like spam filters, for offensive terms in e-mail, though Mr. Gabrielle says
he wasn’t sure what words, if any, that universities have tried placing on a
“do not type” list.

At this point the service is not being offered to
faculty members or administrators. “I think it’s a business model decision,”
Mr. Gabrielle said, noting that the company may need to figure out whether
it wants to allow ads on Web pages seen by those users; the student and
alumni service is ad-free.

Want to preserve that lesson you did at the
blackboard today in class and share it with students online? TrySketchCast,a free
blogging tool that allows users to record a digital drawing (and
contemporaneous audio), and then embed the animated video onto a Web site.
It’s essentially an easy form of animation.

Stay informed
Use Really Simple Syndication (RSS) to keep up with technology news
and events. To use RSS you'll need an RSS reader likeGoogle Reader,
NetNewsWire (Mac), or
FeedDemon(Windows) to read RSS feeds. An
RSS feed is basically a dynamic link that updates your RSS reader
when new content is posted to a website (click the "RSS Feeds"
button under our search bar to see examples).

You can also subscribe to technology newsletters, and talk to
students about websites and web services they use on their own. A
majority of teachers do not know what Stickam or
Meeboare, yet these sites are used daily by many of
their students.

Focus on the learning process, not
the end product
When little Susie uses iMovie to create a video of her class field
trip to Cape Canaveral, she should be evaluated on what she's
learned through the creative process, not how many wipes and sound
effects she used in her final movie file. The quality and relativity
of the still pictures she took by learning how to use a digital
camera, or video footage from a well-designed storyboard are better
barometers of a successful project.

Work with IT professionals who
understand education
I work on the IT side of education daily, and I know it's important
to unfetter technology at a school to stimulate the learning
process. IT staff must be willing to bend on certain security
measures and trust students with equipment so that they can be
creative and not boxed in. We let students take laptops home to work
on approved projects, which ultimately motivates their peers to do
the same. We also have a dedicated instructional adviser who helps
teachers integrate technology into their lesson plans. This often
helps ease the teachers' modification of antiquated lessons.

Become a user
Make a
Facebookaccount so you can understand the
allure of social-networking sites. Add some information about
yourself. Locate former school pals. Join some groups. This will let
you see sites like Faceook from a student's perspective.

To collaborate and share course materials, you can create a
Moodlesite for your class, or start a
classblog.
Students benefit more from teachers who
collaborate and less from teachers who force-feed lectures. Also,
it's much easier to teach about something that you've actually used
in depth. It's time to break the stigma of "those that can, do;
those that can't, teach."

Don't be afraid of change
Some teachers think that upgrading from Office 2003 to 2007 is using
the latest technology. However, a Word document is still words and
formatting meant for someone to read. Instead of being satisfied
with word processing in a new version of software, why not let
students create a school "newspaper" on something like
Joomla. The news could be updated in
seconds, it could be interactive (comments, updates, etc.), and it
could be include user-submitted media.
Google Earthcould be used to give an elementary student
global perspective by flying in from a world view down to the roof
of his home.

Late at night on a television station in Lansing,
Michigan, a new kind of program tries to make the audience the main
attraction. It's called TextMeTV,
and it goes like this: One or two young hosts, some of them college
students, sit on a couch and read text messages being sent in live from
viewers, and those messages are also posted on a box in the corner of the
screen. Sometimes the hosts encourage those texters to debate topics of the
day, other times they offer free iPods or other prizes to viewers who can
answer trivia questions. The show looks more like a YouTube page than a
television show. Though moderators do edit the text messages that come in
before they post them to the screen, the show is live with no tape delay,
says Helena Kirby, a producer for the show and one of its 7 rotating hosts.
"There's no swearing and no sexual talk -- we keep it pretty clean," she
adds. Viewers pay a small fee per text message to participate. Ms. Kirby
says the show's best moments have been when viewers sparred about race
issues or politics. "People get fired up," she says. But this January the
show -- which has been on since last year -- began focusing more on games
and contests, like trivia challenges, than on debates.One entertainment bloggerrecently called the show "the dumbest thing I’ve ever
heard," noting that the show seems empty of substance. But Ms. Kirby argues
that it represents a revolutionary new format. "I think some people are just
afraid of it -- that this new concept is going to do something big, and they
don't want it to," she says. "I say, Out with the old, in the with the new."
Amariee Woods, another host of the show who is a senior at Michigan State
University, says that younger audiences want to participate, not just
passively consume media. "People want to put their comments on everything,
and the faster they can do that, the better." A similar show in Texas called
Subtext, which
features students from the University of Texas at Austin, uses a similar
format but focuses on dating. The shows are essentially trying to turn
television into something more like the Internet. In fact, the shows would
probably work better as interactive Web pages where people could put aside
their cell phones and interact with their computer keyboards. But then the
show's producers would not be able to make a cut of the text-messaging fees,
as they do now. Do younger viewers now see one-way broadcast television as
dull? Or are these interactive shows a sign that media companies are trying
to mix many kinds of media formats? Use your computer keyboard to let us
know what you think.

Pen Kenrick J. Mock says he loves recording lectures for his classes
using his tablet PC. And the associate professor of computer science at the
University of Alaska at Anchorage also loves projecting computational
problems using PowerPoint or the writing program OneNote.

What Mr. Mock does not love is the inability to point to a specific part
of the problem for his class. “It’s always bothered me that the pen cursor
is a tiny little dot,” he writes in his blog on technology and teaching.
“The problem is that I like to use the pen to “point” at things as I give
the lecture, but it doesn’t help if the class can’t see it.”

He looked, in vain, for a program that would enlarge the cursor. And
finally he gave in, remembered he was a computer scientist, and wrote a
program himself.

The result is PenAttention, and it turns that minuscule dot into a
minuscule dot with a big colored spotlight around it. It’s a little more
distracting to write with this kind of cursor, but his class can finally see
what he is doing.

The program is free, works on tablet PCs running XP and Vista, and can be
downloaded from a link in Mr. Mock’s blog post describing it.

Microsoft wants to help students get their lives
together (their learning lives, at least), and Tuesday it rolled out a
product to help. As part ofLive@edu,the company’s free Web-based email and calendar suite,
Microsoft unveiledOffice Live
Workspace,which lets students access their work
online and share it with others. Live@edu is in use at more than 600
colleges.

“The most visible new feature is the activity
panel,” said Guy Gilbert, a Microsoft group product manager, in an interview
with The Chronicle Monday. “Suppose you are in a work group with
other students. You can look at the panel and see everything that anyone has
done since you last logged on. And links in the panel take you right to that
object,” whether it is a document, a spreadsheet, contact list, or database.

Users can also set up e-mail alerts that notify
them any time an item is changed.

The service has been running in beta for several
months, and of its estimated 100,000 users, 20 to 30 percent are in higher
education, Mr. Gilbert says. Microsoft has worked with 13 colleges to
fine-tune the service, including Florida Community College at Jacksonville,
Vanderbilt University, and the University of Wisconsin at Parkside.

And if the new service doesn’t seem familiar to
users of
Google Docs,don’t worry. Microsoft’s arch rival
also promises real-time collaboration, and the two companies seem to be
running neck and neck in the education marketplace.

AtGentive: New software platforms that incorporate artificial
intelligence and social networking into their approach toward e-learning.

European researchers working for the AtGentive
project have developed two new software platforms that incorporate
artificial intelligence and social networking into their approach toward
e-learning. AtGentive coordinator Thierry Nabeth says the first generation
of e-learning platforms focused on replicating the classroom experience, but
student's often had difficulty staying motivated and the learning program
failed to keep their attention. To overcome this problem, one of the
AtGentive platforms uses techniques similar to those found on Web sites such
as Facebook that make them so popular as a means of staying in touch with
others. The platforms also use artificial intelligence to keep students
interested. "Artificial agents are autonomous entities that observe users'
activities and assess their state of attention in order to intervene so as
to make the user experience more effective," Nabeth says. "The interventions
can take many forms, from providing new information to the students, guiding
them in their work, or alerting them when other users connect to the
platform." The artificial intelligence agents provide a smart form of
proactive coaching for students by assessing, guiding, and stimulating them.
The agents can alert students when others have read their articles, or when
they receive feedback on their contributions to a collaborative project. The
agents are also able to detect when students are not interacting with the
system and try to get them to rejoin the lesson.

Notes on the Smart PenThe
smart
penthat Wired Campus flagged back in May was
unveiled last week at a technology conference in Palm Springs, Calif. The
company behind it, LiveScribe, has been aggressively marketing the device to
college students with the slogan "Never miss a word." It's basically a
combination recording machine and camera. Users take notes while a minirecorder,
embedded in the pen, records whatever is being said. Later, to clarify the
written notes, the user can touch the pen to a specific passage and listen to a
recording of the instructor speaking those words. A tiny camera links what is
being written to what is being recorded. In a takeoff on television commercials
for pharmaceuticals, the smart-pen advertisement below features a student who
suffers from "restless mind syndrome." The pen is offered as a panacea.
Livescribe has set up a Facebook page to push the pen, and
offers to pay college studentsto promote the
device on their campuses. It's also advertised on the Web site
ThePalestra, where Andy Van Schaack, a senior
lecturer at Vanderbilt University, who is an adviser to LiveScribe, is seen
praising the pen. Will the pen, which sells for about $200, take off with
college students? Will it be used as a crutch for students who are too tired or
distracted to listen to their professors?Andrea L. Foster, "Notes on the Smart Pen," Chronicle of Higher
Education, February 5, 2008 ---
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2719&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Questions
Will we soon be able to lecture without opening our mouths?
Can you send a "relational" database file to a friend by simply shaking hands?
Is this the beginning of a whole new definition of human "relationships?"
Can the message of a hug be digital and unambiguous?
New magic in a kiss or two?
Does your database have halitosis or dirty fingernails or a flu virus?
I'd better stop asking questions about this before I get in trouble!